We believe
the splendid nebular construction of Laplace has its own difficulties;
yet what noble or aspiring mind does not find interior warranties for
the truth of that audacious synthesis? Is it that the soul darts
responsive impartments to the heavens? that the whirl is elemental in
the mind? that baffling intervals stretch deeper within us, and shoals
of stars with no parallax appear?
Among the functions of Science, then, may well be included its power as
a metre of the intellectual advance of mankind. In these splendid
symbols man writes the record of his advancing humanity. How all is
interwoven with the All! A petrified national mind will certainly
appear in a petrified national Science. And that sublime upsurging from
the depths of human nature which came with the last half of the
eighteenth century appeared not alone in the new political and social
aspirations, but in a fresh insight into Nature. This spirit manifested
itself in the new sciences that sprang from the new modes of
vision,--Magnetism, Electricity, Chemistry,--the old crystalline spell
departing before a dynamical system of Physics, before the thought of
the universe as a living organic whole.
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