tendencies is a mere fallacy of words. Not a single tendency has been proved to exist. All nature is, in each of its departments, an assemblance of varied compounds of similar elementary particles. A tendency of these to form any one would form only that one, and no other. But instead of all things being only multiples of a single composition, the universal character of nature is, in all its classes, that of multiform multiplicity; of compound diversity so inexhaustible, that of the inexpressible millions of millions of substances which are around us, scarcely any one is the exact counterpart of another.

You will therefore only smile when you find that some men can gravely say, and others gravely repeat, that one particle tended to unite with another, and these with others, but only in a straight line, and then, that they tended to bend that line into a ring, and then to enlarge that into a vessel, and then to branch out into other vessels, and then to make bone, and then to make blood, and then to form nerves and flesh, and then to extend into limbs, and then to make a heart, and then a pair of lungs, and then all the other functions of the human body, one after another: giving thus a thousand different and inconsistent tendencies to the same elementary particles, none of which can be proved, or is likely, to have had any tendency at all.

The true deduction of an enlightened reason therefore is, that all visible nature has originated from an intelligent Creator-that such a Creator will continue to superintend what he has made, to preserve it in existence as long as he means it to subsist-and that he who has made, and thus superintends, will be also the moral governor of his intellectual creation, and will exercise such a moral providence over them as his purposes and their welfare shall require; and will therefore make to them such communications of his sovereignty, of his mind, and of his will, as He may from time to time deem expedient.

In expressing to you these thoughts, I am only stating the process and progress of my younger mind, when it was forming its settled principles on these great subjects. I could not live contented with ignorance, nor with error. I

estimations. The laborious and active-minded Loudon mentions only 44,000, of which 38,000 had been described.-Encyc. Gard. 250.

wanted knowledge, and as I was acquiring it, I felt, what a man of misdirected talent at that time justly said, "The mind cannot unknow." All knowledge attained, makes more knowledge necessary. There is a knowledge which creates doubts that nothing but a larger knowledge can satisfy; and he who stops in the difficulty will be perplexed and uncomfortable for life.

On the vital points, of the Deity and his will, I desired certainty above all things, as far as it could be gained. Truth only on this is valuable, and it is most important to our well-being not to be without it. I sought anxiously for it, and it came to me, according to my most cautiously-exerted judgment, in the ideas which I have just expressed.

From the perception that our earth and the universe were vast compounds, and that no compound could be eternal, I proceeded to study botany, zoology, anatomy, and chymistry, that I might distinctly know what organized beings were, and in what they differed from inorganic things. I made various experiments in each; and planted seeds and watched their germinations, and dissected and examined every vegetable in my reach, to learn its structure and to observe the mode of its development and the causes of its functional products. I devoted two years specially to these considerations, when the full enjoyment of the strength and spirits of eight-and-twenty made every employment easy and pleasant, that I might have such ocular demonstrations of the course and processes of nature as I could then attain.* The result of all these inquiries was, that my mind became fully satisfied that every substance in nature was a composition of elementary particles; that no particles could of themselves form the diversified and skilful and constant organizations which were everywhere around me, and of which my own body was to myself a conscious

* I cannot but remember with thankfulness the benefit I derived, in 1795 and 1796, from the lectures of Dr. G. Pearson on Chymistry, Sir James E. Smith on Botany, and afterward on Zoology, Sir Anthony Carlisle on Comparative Anatomy, Dr. Babington on Mineralogy, and Dr. Adam Marshall on Human Anatomy. The latter, a man of strong mind, had deeply studied the mathematical construction and laws of our bony fabric, and was never happier than when explaining them. In the course which I attended, he was particularly scientific and eloquent on this subject. I remember his devoting a whole lecture to display the profound science that was visible in the formation of the double hinge of one of our joints.

specimen. Succeeding years of reflection and more knowledge have confirmed these earlier deductions, and provided a source of unceasing happiness to my enfeebled age, from the considerations to which they lead, and from the hopes and prospects which they are ever opening before it. Organization, then, became to me the decisive teacher of a creative intelligence. The elementary particles of things must have been in a separate state, before they were combined into organizations; and nothing but a designing intelligence could have formed them into these. Here my mind found its intellectual rest, of which it has never since been dispossessed.

The CREATION of VEGETABLES is placed by Moses subsequent to the production of light and of the atmosphere; immediately after the waters had receded from the land, and just before the creation and arrangement of the solar system.

This position of vegetables in the series of creation exactly answers the demands of our present knowledge. Instead of requiring the sun's light to germinate, seeds and plants, in order to do so, must be sowed and placed in darkness before they begin to vegetate.* A small heat and moisture first cause their living principle to begin its operations, but they cannot flower and fruit until they receive the solar beams; nor could they grow without light, air, and moisture. A portion of oxygen air is essential to

* Solar light is unfriendly to first germination. Loudon mentions, as one of the necessary conditions of germination, that the seed sown must be defended from the action of the rays of light."-Encycl. Gard. 194. Hence the farmer or gardener harrows or rakes in his grains.-Ib. †M. Leuchs has tried many experiments of the effects of light on plants. His conclusions are, "Solar light favours in them the assimilation of carbonic acid gas-facilitates their verdure, and the formation of their volatile and aromatic principles.-It is essential to florification and fructification. We cannot obtain ripe seeds from plants reared in darkness. Many become more lax and watery as the light is lessened-lamp or torch-light but imperfectly supplies that of the sun-they incline to it, and those near it harden to dryness; but it keeps those green, which in total darkness would become pale."-Bull. Univ. 1829, p. 54.

M. Martius observed the milky juice of the euphorbia phosphorea to be luminous. Mr. Prinsep found that light exerts a great influence in the change of colour in plants in autumn. Its privation prevented any alteration, though in light the leaf passed from green to yellow, and sometimes to red.-Ib. p. 436.

Treviranus distinguishes the light and heat developed from plants, in

vegetation.* Hence the previous atmosphere, which con tains in it more than that portion, was indispensable, as was also some water on the soil where they were to grow.t This exact placing of the vegetable formation and first germination is another test of the authenticity of the Hebrew cosmogony, which random fiction could not have stood.

I was considerably affected in my younger days by the long-standing objection, that Moses made light to exist before the creation of the sun, as books then usually taught, what some still fancy, that there could not have been light without this luminary. But not choosing, on such an important point, to attach my faith to any general assertion, I sought to find out if any investigator of the nature of light had perceived any distinction in its qualities or operation, which made it a fluid, or matter, independent of the sun. It was not easy, before the year 1790, to meet with the works of any student of nature on such a subject, as it had been little attended to: but I at length saw the fact asserted by Henckel, a German of the old school, of some value in his day; and soon afterward some experiments were announced in England, which confirmed the supposition. It has been a favourite point of attention with me ever since;

dependently of their life, from the light and heat which are intimately.connected with their existence and increase with their vigorous health. He doubts if those flowers are really luminous which have been marked as such, and concludes, from his experiments, that neither heat nor light are given out during the life of vegetables.-Bull. Univ. 1830, p. 257. In this conclusion I cannot concur, for I have at times remarked, after sunset, a perceptible glow in the colours of flowers, unusual to them in their common state, as if coloured light of their own colour was issuing from them. I have seen the difference in the sweet-williams, geraniums, marigolds, heart's-ease, and pinks, at various parts of the day, when the sun was not visible. It has been most apparent to me in the red flowers; next, in the yellow. It resembled an actual secretion of light, additional to their usual show. The presence of the sun upon them les sens the effect. It is most perceptible in his absence. I have noticed the same occasional appearance on the bricks in a country path. In some states of the atmosphere, when the sun was clouded, they have had a peculiar glow, without any visible causes.

*The most favourable proportion is thought to be one-fourth of oxygen, or that of the common air. Pure oxygen gas accelerates vegetation, but makes the plant feeble. In less than one-eighth of oxygen germination will not take place.

†There is a remarkable connexion between water and plants. Mad- den observed, in the deserts he traversed, that, "wherever there is water, no matter in what part of the wilderness, there vegetables are found."-Trav. in Turkey.

and no truth in philosophy seems to be now more clearly ascertained, than that light has a distinct existence, separate and independent of the sun. This is a striking confir mation of the Mosaic record; for that expressly distinguishes the existence and operation of light from the solar action upon it, and from that radiation of it which is connected with his beams and presence. By Moses, an interval of three days is placed between the luminous creation, and the appearance and position of the sun and moon. Light was therefore operating, by its own laws and agencies, without the sun, and independently of his peculiar agency, from the first day to the fourth of our terrestrial fabrication. But from the time that the sun was placed in his central position, and his rays were appointed to act on our earth, they have been always performing most beneficial operations, essential to the general course of things.* They have also been ascertained, by Dr. Herschel, to have a power of heating, distinct from their production of light and colour, an interesting discovery, connected with more consequences and inferences than have yet been noticed.t

The glory of Sir Isaac Newton began by his discovering that light was not simple and homogeneous; but that it consisted of seven rays of different colours and of different and invariable degrees of refrangibility. The same degree of this belonged always to the same colour, and the same colour to the same degree of refrangibility. Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colours; white light their compound.

An opposing theory to this has been gradually growing up from the time of Des Cartes, and is now maintained by several men of no small name and powers in science, which con

"The rays of solar light possess several remarkable physical properties: they heat; they illuminate; they promote chymical combination; they effect chymical decompositions; they impart magnetism to steel; they alter the colours of bodies; they communicate to plants and flowers their peculiar colours; and are, in many cases, necessary to the development of their characteristic qualities."-Brewster's Life of Newton, p. 90.

From his experiments, Dr. Herschel "drew the important conclu sion, that there were invisible rays in the light of the sun, which had the power of producing heat; and which had a less degree of refrangibility than red light." These results were confirined by Sir Henry Englefield Dr. Brewster's Optics, p. 89.

Brewster's Newton, p. 43.

Dr. Hooke, and Huygens, in Newton's lifetime, urged the undulatory theory, which Des Cartes had first suggested. Newton answered them. But Euler and others revived it. Now observations induced

G