position which the sun occupies in physical philosophy, as the force-factor of creation. "The sun is the source of all those forms of light and life," says a modern astronomer, * which exist upon the earth. "That is no idle dream," continues he. No fancy of the imagination. "Every form of force upon the earth; every action that we perform; all the forms of forces we know of; even the thoughts we think, may be said to come from the sun : It is by the sun's heat that life is maintained upon the earth."

This is an apparent truth; it is a scientific fact, no doubt. To physical science, which has confessedly achieved such great results, and been of such incalculable benefit to the darkly-minded millions of mankind, the sun is the most important factor. The sun being the source of all those forces which the sensuous mind conceives to be essential, nay indispensable, to the order, stability, progressive perpetuity and government of the world, is a very important body. Nothing is more manifest to the purely objective sense, nor more consistent with the tendency of scientific observation than that the sun is a more important factor in the universe than the Deity; and that the absence of the former would be more disastrous to our planetary system than that of the latter. The fallacy of such a conception is no fault of science, but due rather to the habit man has of viewing scientific induction-of interpreting scientific demonstration.

Finally, it is needless longer to multiply evidence * Prof. Proctor's Lecture on the Sun, New York, Jan. 8, 1874.

of the inevitable tendency of the exclusively analytical method in dealing with the complex problems of life and mind. An "exclusively analytical view of the world," says M. Papillon, before quoted, "has led us to a first undeniable certainty, the existence of a principle of energy and motion. A second view of the universe, exclusively synthetic, leads us, as we have seen, to another certainty, which is the existence of a principle of differentiation and harmony. This principle is what we call spirit." The existence of this principle of differentiation in nature is as certain to the deductive mind as is that of the primary atom, or the imponderable ether to the inductive mind. Indeed, to the former, this differentiation is no hypothesis at all. It represents a factor, a personality-in nature as fixed in its seat as self-consciousness. Without its aid one could never rise to the cognition of a creature, much less to that of a Creator, but must be forever compelled to confine his aspirations to the temporal destiny of acids and alkalies, functions and forces. The Ego in man could never have anything more than a mythical existence; faith would ever be indispensable to bridge over the chasm between soul life and external existence-to repair a most fatal defect in the scientific philosophy of human life.

It is unnecessary, perhaps, to enlarge upon this phase of our subject; for nothing can be more perfectly obvious than the inadequacy of the scientific method to meet the requirements of even a rational philosophy, and to satisfy the natural instincts of the *The Constitution of Matter.

mena.

human heart. Mr. Buckle, in the essay to which we have referred, remarks this defect of the analytical or scientific method in resolving physical problems, and points out the necessity of bringing to our aid the synthetical or deductive method, if we would form just conceptions of even physical pheno"The farther our knowledge advances," says he, "the greater will be the need of rising to transcendental views of the physical world."* If one must generalize and form hypotheses, it is certainly quite as becoming to the dignity of the understanding to do so on the subjective side of nature as on the objective; and if one then fails to fathom the Infinite, as one certainly will, he shall not at least fail to get below the surface of things, nor commit the

* "What makes this all the more serious is, that the farther our knowledge advances, the greater will be the need of rising to transcendental views of the physical world. To the magnificent doctrine of the indestructibility of matter, we are now adding the no less magnificent one of the indestructibility of force; and we are beginning to perceive that, according to the ordinary scientific treatment, our investigations must be confined to questions of metamorphosis and of distribution; that the study of causes and of entities is forbidden to us; and that we are limited to phenomena through which and above which we can never hope to pass. But, unless I greatly err, there is something in us which craves far more than this. Surely we shall not always be satisfied, even in physical science, with the cheerless prospect of never reaching beyond the laws of coexistence and of sequence. Surely this is not the be-all and end-all of our knowledge. And yet, according to the strict canons of inductive logic, we can do no more.”—Buckle's Essay on the Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge.

too common error of mistaking the phenomenal for the actual in nature.

"The object of science is to teach us the invisible," says an eminent physicist.* We have no doubt of it. The influence of scientific studies tends undeniably in that direction. But we respectfully maintain, and the point cannot be too strongly insisted upon, that it is not due to any intrinsic virtue of the inductive method, that the invisible is revealed-except force be the invisible referred to, which is always invisible; but rather to the unfolding of the interior perceptions, which such studies effect. One might with equal reason claim that the superstitious vagaries of the Middle Ages promoted the growth of the moral virtues, because those graces were cultivated, to some extent, during their propagation. It is easy to mistake the coincident. for the consequent. Man comes to regard scientific demonstrations as something to delight his intellect, without disturbing his faith. The enlightened mind instinctively transposes such demonstrations, and is thus enabled so to interpret them as to do no violence to the existence of his personality here, or to his destiny in the hereafter. In other words, he comes to regard scientific facts as physical illusions; and too often to confound the scientifically true with the physically false.

* Tyndall.

INDEX.

Ascidian, tendency in to differen- | (Body, continued.)

tiate organs, pp. 60–66.
Agassiz on the perfect insect, p.
62.

Amaba, lowest form of living