the eye and almost overwhelm the mind. It has taken humanity certainly seven thousand years to overcome their awe at many of them, and instead of revering them as mysteries, to analyse and classify them under the names of science. This might seem marvellous enough; but human intellect has done even more than this. It has combined a broad and comprehensive system of eclecticism, by which it takes up the developments of particular sciences, scattered into distinct isolation, and of them has endeavoured to compose one vast, magnificent, orderly picture, which it has called the philosophy of science, or the science of the physical universe. Thus far have human intelligence, and human ingenuity, and human imagination gone in the long labour of tracking the path of Deity through His footprints in creation; and they have done well. Man by their means has climbed up the lofty pinnacle of external nature, and from eternal monuments can gaze out into infinity and ask for further light. Still in this sublime eclecticism, which is the summit of all human intelligence, we are confronted with incongruities which we cannot explain, and confounded with problems that we cannot solve. We call them mysteries, and we pause, bewildered and lost in internal darkness. We find "books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and voices in everything;" but as we listen, those books seem to tell incongruous stories, those sermons preach paradoxical principles, those voices speak different languages. Individual men repeat what they hear, and the result is Babel and confusion. Earth is distracted with their warrings, and it seems as though human destiny were to be only multiplied division. The professors of every science differ on the very subjects of their studies, and the eclecticism that gathers in the individual sciences, also gathers in these differences, and is therefore but a combination of jargons. The world listens to the Babel of opinions, and feels that the key and the clue have not yet been discovered that can introduce harmony, order, and peace; that can explain apparent contradictions, unite apparently divided things, fill dark places with light, and pluck from the hidden face of Isis, the veil that conceals it and perplexes our research. Humanity utters its groan of despondency and its prayer for increased knowledge, with wisdom to use it. It feels that to explain these effects we must penetrate into another world,—the world of causes; and to comprehend that world of causes, we must understand something of a still interior world, the world. of ends. It perceives design imprinted on everything,—from the revolving planet to the rounded pebble,-from the giant megatherium to the minute animalcule, from the towering baobab of Senegal or the Washington pine of California to the tiny moss,-from the sun that illumines a

system to the stone that reflects its light,-from the instinct of a worm to the intellect of a man,-from the drivellings of an idiot to the musings of a sage; for it detects the glorious truth that they must have been created "from uses, for uses;" and it asks what are the ends and the causes of all these things, and what is the name of that science of sciences that treats of and elucidates them?

Vain and self-conceited philosophy will reply, that these are mysteries beyond human comprehension, and never intended for the consideration of man; but true and sound philosophy abjures all mysteries. The form and motion of the earth was a mystery to the world for ages; but man has since learned to read the lesson right. The order of creation and the composition of the earth was a mystery for ages too; but divine light has glanced upon it, and it is a mystery no longer. As defect of strength makes many light things immovable to the child, so defect of understanding renders many simple things mysterious to the man. The child becomes a youth, and the immovable thing is moved; the man becomes a sage, and the mysterious thing is simple. Self-conceited philosophy has ever endeavoured to arrest the onward and upward progress of humanity. Had the world listened to its mutterings, Galileo's grand discovery would have rotted with him in the Inquisition; Columbus's intuitions would have never been proven, and America would never have been known; Newton's sublime conception would have been consigned to oblivion, the geological researches of Smith would have perished, and the wonders of electricity and magnetism have been postponed for a wiser and a later age. Thank God, the drivellings of this self-conceited and restricting philosophy have been but as mists before the sun! They may have lengthened out the twilight, but they could not arrest the consummation of the day They were doomed to dissipation, indeed, by the reaction of the very sunshine they attempted to obscure!

I assert, then, that these pseudo-mysterious worlds of causes and ends are now open to human inspection. The science of sciences of which I spoke, is revealed, and it is the desideratum of ages. It harmonizes and explains all the paradoxes and inconsistencies that have bewildered human intellects, and paralyzed human energy. It is the simplicity of truth, the beauty of goodness, the glory of hope, the gospel of the age, glad tidings to mental and moral wanderers, a lamp in the path, a lantern to the feet," and "a light shining in a dark place." Let us enter, my friends, upon the portico of this sublime study.

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I. I assert, then, in the first place, that every natural thing has a determinate character essential to itself.

II. I affirm, secondly, that everything has a definite relation to all other things also essential to itself.

III. I assert, thirdly, that the character and relation is complete, that is, in firsts and in lasts.

IV. That this relationship is eviternal,* is in the producing cause as well as in the effect produced; and that the ends for which these effects are produced are eviternal also.

V. That the relationships between ends, causes, and effects, are Correspondences, the science of which is the science now under consideration.

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I. My first position, "that all things have a determinate character," needs but very little proof. The sun is the sun, the earth is the earth, only because and by reason of their possession of certain determinate qualities, which compose their individual character. Change these qualities, and you change the subject. Deprive the sun of its qualities of being the centre of our solar system, of its light by which it illumines its dependent planets, of the heat by which it kindles them into life, and it ceases to be the sun. It is therefore simply to say, Change the sun into something else, and it will not be what it was before. The identity of all natural things, consequently, consists in the identity of all the qualities that constitute those things. These qualities are but parts of the whole; which whole is but their combination. Any removal of any one of them, or any change in the proportions of any one of these qualities, must therefore change the combination. Water is water because composed of two parts of hydrogen and seven of oxygen every nine parts of volume. The combination of these two elements of water in any other proportions will not produce water, but something else. Air is composed of certain elementary gases mingled in certain definite proportions. It is air because it is thus composed. Wherever we discover this combination of these constituents we shall find it to be air. This combination of its constituents forms its character. This character must be determinate, because if it were not itself, it must be something other than itself; this is evident. As this character is determined by the definite combination of its constituent qualities, so therefore these constituent qualities must be essential to the character. That is, if they were other than what they are, the thing would be other than what it is. Hence, as the character is determined by the qualities, so the character must be determinate; and as the character is determinate, so therefore the qualities must be essential. Consequently, we conclude that every natural thing has a determinate character essential to itself.

* · Eviternal, or indefinite duration.

II. But everything has also a definite relation to all other things. The sun has a certain relation to the earth as its sun; the earth also has a certain relationship to the sun as its planet. Man has a certain relation to the minerals he uses, the vegetables he eats, and the animals he employs. These, again, have a certain relation to the man by whom they are used, eaten, or employed. Each of these, again, have certain relationships one to another;-the horse has a certain relationship to the ox, and both of them to the elephant and dog; and all of them to the man. The oak has a certain relationship to the misletoe that hangs from its branches, to the daisy that springs up at its foot, to the moss that clings round its trunk, and to the bird that alights on its twigs. They are supported by the same earth, fanned by the same breeze, warmed by the same heat, and illumined by the same light. They each have their distinct place in the vast plane of existence, they each have their determinate character,—they each have their definite relationships to each other, and to all other things. In that day when it could be said, a new object exists," all these qualities were within it and around it, determining its character, allotting its place, and defining its relation to all other existent things. Therefore, we conclude that this relation is certain. This relation is not only certain, but it is definite. This follows also as a necessary consequence. Any relation must be

definite. It must be defined in order that it be relation at all. Were the misletoe a part of the oak, even, it must still possess some definite relationship to the oak, as much as the leaf bears to the twig, the twig to the branch, the branch to the trunk, the trunk to the roots, and each individual part to the whole. Its individuality requires that it must have a determinate character; and its having a determinate character different from other things, involves that it have a distinct or definite relation to those other things from which it differs. This we all must perceive. Hence the sciences that describe those characters are severally distinct sciences, while the science that determines the relationship that these distinct sciences bear to one another is the philosophy of all sciences. This natural and inevitable division holds good also of mental as well as of physical phenomena; and upon its premises proceed all systems of classification of thoughts into generic and specific, essential and accidental, relevant and irrelevant, true and false. Determinate things must have definite relationships; all things have determinate characters; ergo, all things have definite relationships. But these definite relations must also be essential to the things themselves; and this, likewise, we must instantly perceive; for the very character of definite relationship requires the relation to be essential to the thing possessing

it. As with the character, so with the relation.

It is what it is, The qualities that

because it is not anything other than what it is. constitute its specific character must be essential to that character, as we have shewn; and the several qualities that determine the specific character of its relation, must be essential to that relation also; for it (the relation) could not be what it is but from its essential qualities. The oak has certain definite relations to the earth in place, to history in time, to other trees in its nature, to other oak trees in its determinate character, and to other oak trees similar in character, nature, history, and place, in its accidental conditions. That is, its relation to the earth may be defined as its growing in Windsor Park; to history, as its existing in the year 1858; to other trees, in its being an oak, and not beech or poplar; to other oaks, in its being white or black; to other white or black oaks now in Windsor Park, in its being pretty or ugly, well grown or stunted, well leaved or bare, hung with misletoe and surrounded with daisies, or standing lightning-struck and riven, a scathed and leafless monument of elemental war! These definite qualities and conditions are essential to the relations of this particular oak, because the changing of them would constitute a change of the relation; and so of man and of all other things. Hence, then, we must conclude that all things have their essential determinate character, and their essential definite relations to all other things.

III. But we also asserted that these two essentials were not only in generals, bnt in particulars, in firsts and in lasts, in first principles and in their ultimate productions. This, too, will be readily perceived. All wholes are made up of parts. If the whole possess a determinate character, so must each part also possess this determinate character; for it is the determinate character of each part that affords its determinate character to the whole. So, likewise, if the whole possess definite relations to all other wholes, so must each part possess its definite relations to the whole of which it forms a part, to every other part of which it is the fellow, and to all other wholes and their parts by which it may be surrounded. We will keep to the oak tree as our illustration. The oak, as a tree, as we have shown, does certainly possess these two essentials of being,-determinate character and definite relation. But if the tree possess them, so also must the root, the trunk, the branches, the boughs, the twigs, the leaves; because their possession by these parts constitute their possession by the tree. Every part, therefore, has its determinate character of root or trunk, of branch or bough, of twig or leaf; and also its definite relation of being at the top or bottom, on the east or western side, close to the trunk or at its extremities. This