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ESSAY IX.

Πολυμαθιη νοον ου διδάσκει ειναι γαρ ἐν το σοφον, επιςασθαι γνώμην ήτε εγκυβερνησει παντα δια παντων.

(Translation.)—The effective education of the reason is not to be supplied by multifarious acquirements: for there is but one knowledge that merits to be called wisdom, a knowledge that is one with a law which shall govern all in and through all.

HERAC, apud Diogenem Laert. ix. § 1.

Historical and Illustrative.

THERE is still preserved in the Royal Observatory at Richmond the model of a bridge, constructed by the late justly celebrated Mr. Atwood (at that time, however, in the decline of life), in the confidence, that he had explained the wonderful properties of the arch as resulting from compound action of simple wedges, or of the rectilinear solids of which the material arch was composed: and of which

supposed discovery, his model was to exhibit ocular proof. Accordingly, he took a sufficient number of wedges of brass highly polished. Arranging these at first on a skeleton arch of wood, he then removed this scaffolding or support; and the bridge not only stood firm, without any cement between the squares; but he could take away any given portion of them, as a third or a half, and appending a correspondent weight, at either side, the remaining part stood as before. Our venerable sovereign, who is known to have had a particular interest and pleasure in all works and discoveries of mechanic science or ingenuity, looked at it for awhile stedfastly, and, as his manner was, with quick and broken expressions of praise and courteous approbation, in the form of answers to his own questions. At length turning to the constructor, he said, " But, Mr. Atwood, you have presumed the figure. You have put the arch first in this wooden skeleton. Can you build a bridge of the same wedges in any other figure? A strait bridge, or with two lines touching at the apex? If not, is it not evident, that the bits of brass derive their con

tinuance in the present position from the property of the arch, and not the arch from the property of the wedge?" The objection was fatal; the justice of the remark not to be resisted; and we have ever deemed it a forcible illustration of the Aristotelian axiom, with respect to all just reasoning, that the whole is of necessity prior to its parts; nor can we conceive a more apt illustration of the scientific principles we have already laid down.

All method supposes a union of several things to a common end, either by disposition, as in the works of man; or by convergence, as in the operations and products of nature. That we acknowledge a method, even in the latter, results from the religious instinct which bids us "find tongues in trees; books in the running streams; sermons in stones: and good (that is, some useful end answering to some good purpose) in every thing." In a self-conscious and thence reflecting being, no instinct can exist, without engendering the belief of an object corresponding to it, either present or future, real or capable of being realized: much less the instinct, in which humanity itself is ground

ed: that by which, in every act of conscious perception, we at once identify our being with that of the world without us, and yet place ourselves in contra-distinction to that world. Least of all can this mysterious pre-disposition exist without evolving a belief that the productive power, which is in nature as nature, is essentially one (i. e. of one kind) with the intelligence, which is in the human mind above nature: however disfigured this belief may become, by accidental forms or accompaniments, and though like heat in the thawing of ice, it may appear only in its effects. So universally has this conviction leavened the very substance of all discourse, that there is no language on earth in which a man can abjure it as a prejudice, without employing terms and conjunctions that suppose its reality, with a feeling very different from that which accompanies a figurative or metaphorical use of words. In all aggregates of construction therefore, which we contemplate as wholes, whether as integral parts or as a system, we assume an intention, as the initiative, of which the end is the correlative.

Hence proceeds the introduction of final causes in the works of nature equally as in those of man. Hence their assumption, as constitutive and explanatory by the mass of mankind; and the employment of the presumption, as an auxiliary and regulative principle, by the enlightened naturalist, whose office it is to seek, discover, and investigate the efficient causes. Without denying, that to resolve the efficient into the final may be the ultimate aim of philosophy, he, of good right, resists the substitution of the latter for the former, as premature, presumptuous, and preclusive of all science; well aware, that those sciences have been most progressive, in which this confusion has been either precluded by the nature of the science itself, as in pure mathematics, or avoided by the good sense of its cultivator. Yet even he admits a teleological ground in physics and physiology: that is, the presumption of a something analogous to the causality of the human will, by which, without assigning to nature, as nature, a conscious purpose, he may yet distinguish her agency from a blind and lifeless mechanism. Even he admits its

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