tinually supplied with water, and that unceasing circulation of a fluid so essentially necessary to the very being of the animal and vegetable kingdom takes place."

Such impressions appear thus to rise irresistibly in the breasts of men, when they obtain a sight, for the first time, of the varied play and comprehensive connexions of the laws by which the business of the material world is carried on and its occurrences are brought to pass. To dwell upon or develope such reflections is not here our business. Their general prevalence in the minds of those to whom these first views of new truths are granted, has been, we trust, sufficiently illustrated. Nor are the names adduced above, distinguished as they are, brought forward as authorities merely. We do not claim for the greatest discoverers in the realms of science any immunity from error. In their general opinions they may, as others may, judge or reason ill. The articles of their religious belief may be as easily and as widely as those of other men, imperfect, perverted, unprofitable. But on this one point, the tendency of our advances in the scientific knowledge of the universe to lead us up to a belief in a most wise maker and master of the universe, we conceive that they who make these advances, and who feel, as an original impression, that which others feel only by receiving and teaching, must be looked to with a peculiar attention and respect. And what their impressions have commonly been, we have thus endeavoured to show.

CHAP. VI.-On Deductive Habits; or, on the Impression produced on Men's Minds by tracing the consequences of ascertained Laws.

THE opinion illustrated in the last chapter, that the advances which men make in science tend to impress upon them the reality of the Divine government of the world, has often been controverted. Complaints have been made, and especially of late years, that the growth of piety has not always been commensurate with the growth of knowledge, in the minds of those who make nature their study. Views of an irreligious character have been entertained, it is sometimes said, by persons eminently well instructed in all the discoveries of modern times, no less than by the superficial and ignorant. Those who have been supposed to deny or to doubt the existence, the providence, the attributes of God, have in many cases been men of considerable eminence and celebrity for their attainments in science. The opinion that this is the case appears to be extensively diffused, and this persuasion has probably often produced inquietude and grief in the breasts of pious and benevolent men.

This opinion, concerning the want of religious convictions among those who have made natural philosophy their leading pursuit, has probably gone far beyond the limits of the real fact. But if we allow that there are any strong cases to countenance such an opinion, it may be worth our while to consider how far they admit of any satisfactory explanation. The fact appears at first sight to be at variance with the view we have

given of the impression produced by scientific discovery; and it is moreover always a matter of uneasiness and regret, to have men of eminent talents and knowledge opposed to doctrines which we consider as important truths.

We conceive that an explanation of such cases, if they should occur, may be found in a very curious and important circumstance belonging to the process by which our physical sciences are formed. The first discovery of new general truths, and the development of these truths when once obtained, are two operations extremely different-imply different mental habits, and may easily be associated with different views and convictions on points out of the reach of scientific demonstration. There would therefore be nothing surprising, or inconsistent with what we have maintained above, if it should appear that while original discoverers of laws of nature are peculiarly led, as we have seen, to believe the existence of a supreme intelligence and purpose; the far greater number of cultivators of science, whose employment it is to learn from others these general laws, and to trace, combine, and apply their consequences, should have no clearness of conviction or security from error on this subject, beyond what belongs to persons of any other class.

This will, perhaps, become somewhat more evident by considering a little more closely the distinction of the two operations of discovery and development, of which we have spoken above, and the tendency which the habitual prosecution of them may be expected to produce in the thoughts and views of the student.

We have already endeavoured in some measure to describe that which takes place when a new law of nature is discovered. A number of facts in which, before, order and connexion did not appear at all, or appeared by partial and contradictory glimpses, are brought into a point of view in which order and connexion become their essential character. It is seen that each fact is but a different manifestation of the same principle; that each particular is that which it is, in virtue of the same general truth. The inscription is decyphered; the enigma is guessed; the principle is understood; the truth is enunciated.

When this step is once made, it becomes possible to deduce from the truth thus established, a train of consequences often in no small degree long and complex. The process of making these inferences may properly be described by the word Deduction. On the other hand, the very different process by which a new principle is collected from an assemblage of facts, has been termed Induction; the truths so obtained and their consequences constitute the results of the Inductive Philosophy; which is frequently and rightly described as a science which ascends from particular facts to general principles, and then descends again from these general principles to particular applications and exemplifications.

While the great and important labours by which science is really advanced consist in the successive steps of the inductive ascent, in the discovery of new laws perpetually more and more general; by far the greater part of our books of physical science unavoid

ably consist in deductive reasoning, exhibiting the consequences and applications of the laws which have been discovered; and the greater part of writers upon science have their minds employed in this process of deduction and application.

This is true of many of those who are considered, and justly, as distinguished and profound philosophers. In the mechanical philosophy, that science which applies the properties of matter and the laws of motion to the explanation of the phenomena of the world, this is peculiarly the case. The laws, when once discovered, occupy little room in their statement, and when no longer contested, are not felt to need a lengthened proof. But their consequences require far more room and far more intellectual labour. If we take, for example, the laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, we can express in a few lines, that which, when deve loped, represents and explains an innumerable mass of natural phenomena. But here the course of develop ment is necessarily so long, the reasoning contains so many steps, the considerations on which it rests are so minute and refined, the complication of cases and of consequences is so vast, and even the involution arising from the properties of space and number is so serious, that the most consummate subtlety, the most active invention, the most tenacious power of inference, the widest spirit of combination, must be tasked, and tasked severely, in order to solve the problems which belong to this portion of science. And the persons who have been employed on these problems, and who have brought to them the high and admirable qualities which such