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Or again, suppose he threw on the ground a vast and apparently infinite quantity of materials, with silver, steel, glass, and so on, or even their ruder elements, all in confusion ; yet suppose he had so contrived these, that, although the mass was indefinite in quantity, its several parts should unite in clearly defined proportions, so that in each case either a watch. FORETHOUGHT IN CREATION. 119 or Bomething like a watch^ shoiild be produced ; and this not so much hj special contrivance in each case, as either by the affinities and tendencies skilfully imparted to each kind of com- ponent element in the general admixture of materials, or else, if 70U please, by the unseen hand of the artist associating what- ever might duly correspond, you would certainly say, this forecasting power, which implied an intelligence acting upon the most general laws or universal truths, was also a more manifest exhibition of Mind. That then which I would here observe in passing is, if the world does not shew special design in each particular case, it shews something more wonderful. It shews general laws, which imply ideas or thoughts in a mind, which at any rate must be to the whole expanse of the universe nothing less than the mind of a man in proportion to the house which he builds by his mechanical knowledge. An ancient Greek, whose thoughts were somewhat akin to the better wisdom of India, said that Grod works by geometry ; and in the same sense another said. Mind must be the arranger of the world ; for both, as I imagine, found the most positive and yet the most general ideas to which science leads us, involved as principles in the combination and evolution of the universe. No one, for example, would ascribe a balance on the grandest scale, or the power of maintaining the universe in equilibrium by a combination of opposing forces, to chance; or imagine it possible without such a knowledge of mechanical principles, as cannot be without Mind. But surely I need not instruct you whose ancestors^ are said to have suspected the key to the solar system, while the centre of its gravitation was yet inverted in Europe, how wonderfully the planets, of which our Earth is one, revolve around the central orb of the Sun, being at once attracted to him by his greater weight, and yet repelled by the swing of their own career, so that they persist in regular revolution throughout countless years. Why then should I stay to argue, except by a passing ^ Compare Colebrooke's EsMys, and ElphinsioDe, Book III. Chap. i. and the MiUioritiai there quoted. 120 ATOMICAL COMBINATION. suggestion, that this wonderfiil balance, even if it did not minister to purposes of life and beneficence (which however makes my inference stronger), still would come of a law, which implies thought, and that by thinking we are led up to Mind ? " Or again, to take a case, which will fall in tolerably with some of your atomical philosophy to which the Saugata has alluded ; though Canada and his followers among you have very ingeniously reduced the existing forms of life to minute atoms, they were apparently not aware that such atoms combine in certain fixed proportions. For they are not mere particles, consisting all alike of an indiscrete mass, and differing only, or resembling, in size. But they are of different kinds, harder or softer, and heavier or lighter, with different properties of all sorts, such as metals or salts, and so on. These kinds are perhaps upwards of fifty in number. Some of them do not appear to admit of combination, so far as I know ; but most of them may be combined and mingled, so that from their mingling, some third thing results as a compound. An atom of hydrogen, for instance, and eight times its weight of oxygen, wliether this weight come of one atom or of more, combine in water; or again, an atom of hydrogen and sixteen times its weight of sulphur, give you hydrosulphuric acid. Now these proportions in which the atoms, estimated by weight, are found to combine, are neither arbitrary nor variable. Wherever you have water, you have the same proportion in its elements ; and whatever elements combine, do so either in one or more proportions, as the case may be, but not indefinitely, or without a limitation tending to some result, as a mean tends to an end. Again, if two kinds of atoms combine with a third, then they also combine with each other in such degrees or quantities as admit of being compared and measured against the degree of combi- nation with the third ; or in such quantities as can be measured, for example, by the numbers one, eight, sixteen, and thirty-two. Perhaps this proportion may be more nicely traced in the rolling fluid of bodies melted and made volatile by heat, or in what are called gases, than it can in bodies of a more solid kind. NATURAL LAWS — DIVINE THOUGHTS. 121 Bat BO fixed are the proportions of combination, and so evidently natural, that if in experiments 70U put the right quantities of two kinds of atoms together, thej will all mingle, and be mutually absorbed ; but if 70U put too much of one, the other will take up so much as is naturally due to it, and leave the rest un affected. So again, when you have learnt the proportion or degree in which single atoms of certain kinds combine, you may calculate the ratio which the whole mass of the one kind will bear to the other in any given compound. All this may be followed out by close observers of such things into very complex combinations. But you must allow, that nothing is traceable as a system by thought, but what thought first devised. For the observer's method is the author's design. Chance, if there be such a thing as chance, has no rule ; and mystery, so far as things are really mysterious, admits only of imperfect rea- soning upon whatever law it conceals, or dimly hints to us. " Here then I say, that to have embodied even in the primary processes by which particles in nature combine, the traces at least of a law, which thought can investigate, is a thing which implies ordaining Mind. It has also been found, that the more widely men extend their glance over nature, and the more minutely they pore over each part, the more vividly are they struck everywhere by such marks of intelligence, forecasting as well as preserving, though the range of the forecast may be too vast, and with too many aspects, for us to be able to tell oat all its counsel. " While then good men in general prefer, and perhaps wisely, to find those apprehensions of the Deity which they consider necessary, planted deep in the affections and aspirations of Man, I could not refrain from urging, that no less positive and bind- ing testimony to the same need is fumislied also by the naked intellect. So that, without denying that the lively and believ- ing agent within us, may be in general most wholesomely appealed to, in virtue of its hopes and sympathies, as the Soul, I still think a heavenward aspect may be won, not merely firom 122 MIKD OF MAN. what it hopes or fears or is willing to embrace^ but also firom what it is convinced of in its unbiassed understanding, as the Mind. ** But we ought not to be here anticipating the question about A Creator, so much as inquiring whether, apart from our bodily organisation, we have what is properly called Mind. It has sufficiently come out, as, at least in my own judgment, a necessary inference, that from our having a non-bodily or suprasensual knowledge, we have also a non-bodily knower; and I should not wonder if, just as our most intellectual science is if compared to the sensations of the moment, so our immaterial intellect may be when compared to the bodily machinery with which it is associated for awhile. Our most vivid sensations, and even the most violent passions of love or suspicion, pass away so entirely, that we almost wonder at ourselves for having ever entertained them. But the acquirements of the intellect are, at least for mankind as a whole, a more durable property; the deep thoughts of the mind fly upon the wings of speech, from father to son ; and the sacred inheritance of knowledge is often transmitted, through the wreck of empires and the entire subjugation of races, to regions remote in time and space from the explorer with whom some great discovery began.