I.

LETTER in consequence of a pre-established plan, and on regulating principles, and in obedience to perceptible laws, evincing certain foresight and adjusting arrangements, they form the subject of a true science; and this it will be the object of these Letters to shew is the character of that divine philosophy which they will recommend to you to cultivate. All material nature is moulded by the will, fulfils the designs, and subsists and acts on the plans of the stupendous Creator. All intellectual nature-all moral beings, are in the same predicament. The one is not more guided or governed than the other. Mind and matter are equally the objects of the Divine administration; and the rules and principles of this, deserve our researches as much in the one as in the other. Indeed, so far as they can be traced, it will be always more interesting to us to discover those which relate personally to ourselves, than such as uphold or regulate the external substances amid which we are residing. Who would not rather know the divine laws by which his life and destiny are governed, than those which determine the masses or the velocities of Jupiter or Uranus, or which compel the comets to revisit us by periodical migrations? Sublime in its own nature, and most honorable to human genius, is the knowlege which has been attained on points, that at one time seemed beyond all the possibilities of human talent to acquire. The eagle-eyed sagacity and patient observations of some have conquered the seeming impossibility which was so long insurmountable, and by their success have encouraged future minds to hope that few things will hereafter be found inaccessible to

I.

determined diligence and energetic intellect.' But LETTER still that science which is most connected with our individual welfare in this world, and with our endless future in the next, will have an endearing interest to us, of which nothing can divest it. Stars may disappear, or new comets rush upon us, or fresh planets may be discerned to move. But all events of this sort will be ever inconsiderable to us in comparison of the relations which are subsisting between us and God; and the rules and principles by which His moral government of our affairs are directed, and especially in their personal application to each of us respectively. Nothing can exceed the momentous importance of the knowlege of these things to every human being; and the uncertainty in which it may seem to some that they are involved, ought to be but a more impelling reason to excite us to more assiduous endeavours to diminish this obscurity, and to develop their realities as far as it may be permitted to human diligence to do so.

The subject has certainly fallen into discredit from the many wrong interpretations and foolish applications which weak, tho often well-meaning,

7 In the Report of the British Association for 1832, Professor Airy mentioned, among the desiderata of Astronomy, the determination of the mass of Jupiter by observations of the elongations of her satellites.

'I think it would have astonished the mathematicians of antiquity, as much as the populace, to have been told that this splendid planet could have ever been weighed and measured by a human being; and yet what Mr. Airy suggested, he has since himself executed in the most complete manner. He has weighed the mass of Jupiter in the way he thus recommended; and it may show the wonderful perfection of such astronomical measures to state, that he has proved with certainty that this mass is more than 322, and less than 323, times the mass of the terrestrial globe on which we stand.'

Whewell's Address, p. 14.

LETTER persons have at all times been hasty to form and

I.

eager to publish. But this is an evil and an abuse

8

to which every thing human is liable. All the arts and sciences have suffered from rash pretenders and injudicious students. Natural philosophy, until lately, has been peculiarly deformed by the dreams and presumption of its professors. The opinions of the antient philosophers were more often chimeras, that would now disgrace any that were still in their nurseries, than the probable conjecture of reasoning men. But their errors and follies have not deterred later ages from studying the same subjects. On the contrary, they have but stimulated the mind to form wiser conjectures, and to obtain more certain knowlege. Still many in every generation stumbled on the threshold; but their blunders were both guideposts and incentives to happier efforts; and the reward of the persevering industry of human ability has been, that the general world has become possessed of a rich treasure of certain truth in every science, ennobling our common nature, and daily spreading happiness and benefit among us all.

The same consequences will attend the cultivation of divine philosophy. There have been plenty of

Thus Heraclitus thought the Sun was only the breadth of a man's foot, and Epicurus deemed it to be no larger than it appeared to be, or but a little more or less; while Xenophanes taught, that every day's Sun is extinguished when it sets, and that a new Sun comes up in the morning from the East. Plut. Plac. Phil. 1. ii. c. 21. c. 20.

So the Earth was by one philosopher deemed a flat table; by another, like a pillar; by a third, like a drum or tabor; and by a fourth, a dish, hollow in the middle. Plut. Plac. 1. iii. c. 10.

Even the worthy and fair-minded Herodotus, whose work gives us our first solid ground in ancient history and geography, declares, that it was quite laughable, and against common sense, to say that the ocean flows round the Earth, or that the Earth was globular, or that Asia was as large as Europe. Melp. 1. iv. c. 36.

I.

mistakes expressed and penned concerning it, and LETTER many wrong opinions may yet be uttered: but all such will be soon discarded. Whatever is erroneous, has no substantive vitality: it is perishable by its own nature, and will always be but the ephemeron of its day. It is born but to die: the more speedily, as it is more unfounded. While what is true and good, will soon be discovered to be so, and will always survive. We can judge much easier than we can discover; and no one can now start an absurdity but it is seen to be so, as soon as it is seen at all. The public mind has attained this improvement, that no defect can escape its criticism, no delusion can long deceive, no vice or folly elude either detection or condemnation. We need not therefore dread any thing on this ground from the study of our diviner science.

Increase of knowlege always puts our minds into a different state to that which they were in before it accrued. New thoughts and views occur to us as it comes, and change many of our ideas, and influence our future reasoning. It causes us to feel more strongly an ignorance in other matters, and to desire further information. What satisfied us on the points on which it bears, before we received the addition, no longer has that effect. We feel defects and errors in our opinions which we had not been conscious of, and we break up our attachment to many notions of which we once had no doubt. Hence more knowlege in any one branch of knowable subjects, leads us to seek, and seeking, to acquire an augmentation on others. It makes this plurality of information necessary to us; for our minds, if we think at all, will be felt to be full of incongruities and inequalities without it. The parts of our know

LETTER lege will be inconsistent with each other. We shall be walking about the world half child and half man, unless we enlarge our information, and rectify our mistaken conceptions. All the divisions of our intellectual treasures must be improved, for us to have a right mind in any, that have reference to each other. And what is there in a world so finely and artificially complicated as both our material and living portions of it are, which has not reciprocal relations? We cannot avoid silently criticising ourselves full as much as others act the censors to us; and therefore we shall not feel that we are in the right intellectual state and position, unless we advance our attainments on all the subjects which occupy and actuate our own thoughts, and the minds of our contemporaries, whenever we have the opportunity, as well as on any single one that we may have selected or prefer.

To no topics of human meditation do these remarks apply more, than to those which we would class among the Divine ones; to all that is connected with the Deity and His revelations; and to the interest which we may have in them; the present as well as the eventual one."

9

Many of the ancients, notwithstanding their paganism, took a pleasure in thinking of Divine subjects. Diogenes is an instance of this; of whom Plutarch remarks:

'I approve of the saying of Diogenes, who, seeing in Lacedemon a stranger adorned for a feast, very solicitously said to him, Does not a good man think every day a feast, and will it not be altogether a splendid one to us if we are wise?' His additional meaning Plutarch thus illustrates or expresses: 6 For this world indeed is a most holy temple, and highly worthy of God. Into this a man enters at his birth, not to gaze at motionless statues, or things made with hands, but to contemplate those objects which the Divine mind itself has made sensible to our understanding.' Plut. de Tranq. v. ii. p. 848.