TRUE POSITION OF VETERINARY SCIENCE. 303 
we designate by the term nature, and you see wliat a vast signiti- 
cance that word possesses. 
But our reason, itself a form of expression of tills omnipresent 
force, is so constituted that we must find a cause for all these man¬ 
ifestations. These phenomena must be the result of something, 
and that very something, it has been the aim of the human intel¬ 
lect, since the human intellect has existed, to discover. This at¬ 
tempt has been the mainspring that has moved human intelligence 
from the earliest ages. The first or original cause is something 
that will never be arrived at, and is a matter of useless speculation 
and conjecture. Sufficient for us that certain phenomena exist 
whose immediate explanation is to be sought. It is the under¬ 
standing of these causes that constitutes to-day the study of na¬ 
ture, and it was the endeavor to comprehend them that formed, 
in the days of the Egyptians, the pure and unmodified worship of 
Isis. 
To lift the veil from nature is to-day the highest and noblest 
aim and ambition of the human intelligence, just as in long past 
ages it was the acme of perfection to reach the highest position 
in the worship of the mysterious goddess. 
It is apparent to the most superficial reader of history, that 
the study of nature has always been proportionate to the degree 
of civilization. Natural science and civilization have gone hand 
in hand, one promoting the other and then reacting, both being 
at one time the cause and at another the effect. In the progress 
of intelligence, it became evident, after many centuries of fruit¬ 
less groping, that the cause or causes of all the wonderful phe 
nornena of the universe, could not be arrived at by a single leap 
To believe that all these manifestations are the result of a solitary, 
all-pervading, mysterious, unknown and unknowable power, and 
to seek no farther, was extremely unsatisfactory. Special causes 
for special phenomena must be sought for. This fact understood, 
knowledge accumulated fast, and men began to comprehend na¬ 
ture, though very imperfectly. As facts were gathered, others 
were continually added to the store, until it became necessary to 
divide natural knowledge into departments. It would take too 
much time here, and perhaps be foreign to our subject, to discuss 
