of the creation so far as to believe that whatever
curiosity the order of things has awakened in our
minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every
man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to
those inquiries be would put. He acts it as life,
before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner,
nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, de-
scribing its own design. Let us interrogate the
great apparition that shines so peacefully around
us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature?

All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory
of nature. We have theories of races and of func-
tions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea
of creation. We are now so far from the road to
truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each
other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound
and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most
abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a
true theory appears, it will be its own evidence.
Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now
many are thought not only unexplained but inex-
plicable; as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts,
sex.

Philosophically considered, the universe is com-
posed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking,
therefore, all that is separate from us, all which
Philosopliy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is,
both nature and art, all other men and my own

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