distinction between a private and a common interest. An ant never works for herself, but for the society. 'Whatever misfortune happens to them, their care and industry find out a remedy for it; nothing discourages them. If you destroy their nests, they will be repaired in two days. Any body may easily see how difficult it is to drive them out of their habitations, without destroying the inhabitants; for as long as there are any left, they will maintain their ground.' LESSON LXII. Matter. MATTER, then, is the production of an almighty ́intelligence, and as such is entitled to our reverence ; although, from a just abhorrence of many ancient and not a few modern errors, it has too often been regarded in a low and contemptible light. Though not essentially eternal, as was contended for by all the schools of Greece and Asia, nor essentially intelligent, as was contended for by several of them, it evinces in every part and in every operation the impress of a divine origin, and is the only pathway vouchsafed to our external senses by which we can walk Through nature up to nature's God; that God whom we behold equally in the painted pebble and the painted flower-in the volcano and in the cornfield-in the wild winter-storm and in the soft summer moonlight. Although, when contemplated in its aggregate mass, and especially in its organized form, it is perpetually changing, it is every where perfect in its kind, and even at present bears indubitable proofs of being capacified for incorruptibility. In its elementary principles it is maintained by the best schools of both ancient and modern times to be solid and unchangeable ; and, even in many of its compound forms, it discovers an obvious approach to the same character. The firm and mighty mass that constitutes the pyramids of Egypt has resisted the assaults of time and of tempests for, perhaps, upwards of four thousand years, and by many critical antiquaries is supposed to have triumphed over the deluge itself. While there is little doubt that the hard and closely crystallized granitic mountains of every country in which they occur, "the everlasting hills," to copy a correct and beautiful figure from the pages of Hebrew poetry, are coeval with the creation, and form at this moment, as they formed at first, the lowest depths as well as the topmost peaks of the globe. That they are in every instance considerably attenuated and wasted away admits, indeed, of no doubt; but to have borne the brunt of so long and incessant a warfare, without actually being worn down to the level of the circumjacent plains, affords no feeble proof of an almost imperishable nature, and a proof open to the contemplation of the most common capacities. LESSON LXIII. Humility to be learned from the Study of Physics. THERE is, however, another lesson, if I mistake not, which we may readily learn from these lectures, however imperfectly delivered, and which is altogether of a moral character I mean that of humility, in regard to our own opinions and attainments; and of complacency, in regard to those of others. After a revolution of six thousand years, during the whole of which period of time the restless ingenuity of man has been incessantly hunting in pursuit of knowledge, what is there in physical philosophy that is thoroughly and perfectly known even at the present moment? and of the little that is thus known, what is there which has been acquired without the clash of controversy, and the warfare of opposing speculations? Truth, indeed,- for ever praised be the great Source of Truth, for so eternal and immutable a decree-has at all times issued, and at all times will issue, from the conflict; but while we behold philosophers of the highest reputation, philosophers equally balanced in the endowment of native genius, proved by the great teacher Time to have been alternately mistaken upon points to which they had honestly directed the whole acumen of their intellect, how absurd, how contemptible is the fond confidence of common life! Yet what indeed, when fairly estimated by the survey that has now been briefly taken of the sensible universe,-what is the aggregate opinion or the aggregate importance of the whole human race! We call ourselves lords of the visible creation: nor ought we at any time, with affected abjection, to degrade or despise the high gift of a rational and immortal existence. Yet, what is the visible creation? by whom peopled and where are its entrances and outgoings? Turn wherever we will we are equally confounded and overpowered: the little and the great are alike beyond our comprehension. If we take the microscope it unfolds to us, as I observed in our last lecture, living beings, probably endowed with as complex and perfect a structure as the whale or the elephant, so minute that a million of millions of them do not occupy a bulk larger than a common grain of sand. If we exchange the microscope for the telescope, we behold man himself reduced to a comparative scale of almost infinitely smaller dimension, fixed to a minute planet that is scarcely perceptible throughout the vast extent of the solar system; while this system itself forms but an insensible point in the multitudinous marshallings of groups of worlds upon groups of worlds, above, below, and on every side of us, that spread through all the immensity of space, and in sublime, though silent harmony declare the glory of God, and shew forth his handy-work. LESSON LXIV. The Operations of Nature subservient to each other. IN fine, every thing is formed for every thing; and subsists by the kind intercourse of giving and receiving benefits. The electric fire that so alarms us by its thunder, and by the awful effects of its flash, purifies the stagnant atmosphere above us; and fuses, when it rushes beneath us, a thousand mineral veins into metals of incalculable utility. New islands are perpetually rising from the unfathomable gulfs of the ocean, and enlarging the boundaries of organized life; sometimes thrown up, all of a sudden, by the dread agency of volcanoes, and sometimes reared imperceptibly by the busy efforts of corals and madrapores. Liverworts and mosses first cover the bare and rugged surface, when not a vegetable of any other kind is capable of subsisting there. They flourish, bear fruit, and decay, and the mould they produce, forms an appropriate bed for higher orders of plantseeds, which are floating on the wings of the breeze, or swimming on the billows of the deep. Birds next alight on the new-formed rock, and sow, with interest, the seeds of the berries, or the eggs of the worms and insects on which they have fed, and which pass through them without injury; and an occasional swell of the sea floats into the rising island a mixed mass of sand, shells, drifted sea-weed, skins of the casuarina, and shells of the cocoa-nut. Thus the vegetable mould becomes enriched with animal materials; and the whole surface is progressively covered with herbage, shaded by forests of cocoa and other trees, and rendered a proper habitation for man and the domestic animals that attend upon him. The tide that makes a desolating inroad on one side of a coast, throws up vast masses of sand on the opposite : the ligeum, or sea-matweed, that will grow on no other soil, thrives here and fixes it, and prevents it from being washed back or blown away; to which the lime-grass, couch-grass, sand-reed, and various species of willow, lend their aid. Thus fresh lands are formed, fresh banks upraised, and the boisterous sea repelled by its own. agency. Frosts and suns, water and air, equally promote fructification in their respective ways; and the termes, or white ant, the mole, the hampster, and the earth-worm, break up the ground or delve into it, that it may enjoy their salubrious influences. In like manner, they are equally the ministers of putrefaction and decomposition; and liverworts and fungusses, the ant and the beetle, the dew-worm, the ship-worm, and the wood-pecker, contribute to the general effect, and soon reduce the trunks of the stoutest oaks, if lying waste and unemployed, to their elementary principles, so as to form a productive. mould for successive progenies of animal or vegetable existence. Such is the simple but beautiful circle of nature. Every thing lives, flourishes, and decays every thing dies, but nothing is lost for the great principle of : |