evidence greatly inferior to mathematical conclusions 2.

Still the philosophy of nature is the field of utility and beauty. It ministers to the wants, and supplies many of the ornaments of life. It opens one of the universal books of God, in which his infinite power, his stupendous wisdom, and unbounded goodness are written with his own finger in most fair and convincing characters; and thus the material world is made the counterpart of the immaterial mind, in which the latter contemplates as in a glass the image of its Author. Yet after all the improvements which have honoured the labours of Boyle, Newton, Halley and others, whose studies, since the great Bacon founded the true, that

* Zealous for the honour and perfection of their favourite study, some of our modern philosophers strenuously contend that almost every thing in physics is demonstrable. “The ground and reason of which," observes one of better information," I apprehend to be, that many of our geometricians, ambitious of dictating to us about the causes and first springs of Nature, while they can reach only to the measure of some of its effects, have not been careful to distinguish how far a mathematical conclusion will extend, and how far not." -Jones's Philosophy, p. 91.

N

is, the inductive logic, have conferred upon this nation the laurel of philosophy; so vast is its variety and extent, that our knowledge of nature is still very partial and imperfect. The more we know, the more we shall acknowledge to remain unknown, and the more readily subscribe to the verdict of that illustrious child of Wisdom who hath sublimely observed,-" God hath planted the world in man's heart, yet cannot man find out the work which he worketh from the beginning unto the end3.'

We are still only in the infancy of knowledge, and, though not in the sense in which the word was used by the old philosophers, many qualities and causes are yet occult, which may be brought to light by future experiment and analysis. New inductions may be instituted, new axioms established, and new inventions discovered; and thus the great volume of nature is calculated, by the omniscience of its Author, to afford scope to this virtuous and honourable employment, till its whole system shall dissolve and vanish,

3 Eccles. iii. 11.

66

and be succeeded by another of superior order. And then there shall be " a new heaven and a new earth," in which the First will himself take place of all secondary causes; when the film which is spread over the carnal eye shall be removed, new objects presented and new scenes disclosed, under the aspect and illumination of a brighter sun1.

'Isaiah, lx. 19, 20; and Luke, xvii. 2.

On the general subject of this chapter, consult Herschel's Discourses on the Study of Natural Philosophy; Playfair's Dissertations on the Progress of Mathematical and Physical Science; Stewart's Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. ii. chap. 4; his First Dissertation, chap. 2; Maclaurin's Account of Sir I. Newton's Discoveries, book iv. chap. 9; Reid's Essays, vol. ii. chap. 4; Browne's Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind; Adam Smith's History of Astronomy; Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise, &c.-Editor.

BOTH

CHAP. III.

METAPHYSICS.

SECT. I.

The Logic of Metaphysics.

this 66

OTH Aristotle and Bacon agree in styling the Universal Science," having universal being for its subject, but especially mind, the highest and most universal, in as much as it is the primary cause of nature, and as furnishing the principles of all other parts of learning. They likewise agree in terming it" the First Philosophy."

But what is first to nature is not the first to man; nature (i. e. the God of nature) deals in universals, man deals with particulars, from which he ascends by progressive steps to generals, and from generals to universals. Thus the course of human study

is the inverse of the course of things in nature. In this study or cultivation of physics, we have seen, in the foregoing chapter, the philosopher has always to deal with particular facts, from which he rises to generals. This study of nature was, therefore, first in respect of man to the study of universals; and hence, as we have observed, the science of universals obtained the name of metaphysics, literally μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ, which sufficiently accounts for our present arrangement.

Metaphysical science, considered in its widest extent, is the science of the principles and cause of all things existing. But in its more confined and ordinary acceptation, it is the science of the human mind, as known to us by consciousness and reflection. The logic of metaphysics therefore consists in the study of the human faculties, by turning our thoughts inwardly upon our own mental operations, and then arranging them according to the phenomena which they exhibit; in analyzing faculties which are compounded into simple, and in tracing our mental operations. This logic is consequently based on the principle of induction with respect to