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Show 120 THA'f CAUSE IS GOD. I I I I certain limits, to bring it about. And, just as we expect, when we think over the matter correctly, we find that we can effect the greatest an_d the most beneficial changes in those things of whtch we have the most knowledge. Pead substances we can manage the best, because we can in most instance8 take them to pieces, and in many we can put them together again. Vegetables r~nk next; after them animals and then ourselves-m so far as we are material. But, even in the simplest, that is, in the best understood of these cases, we find a boundary which we cannot pass. No art of man, and not any process of nature which we know, can make an eagle graze on the common like a goose; as l_ittle can the lion be made literally to " eat straw with the ox;" and even in dead matter, we, in every case, come at last (and the road is seldom a long <;>ne, though often difficult to find) to substances wh1ch we call u simple ;" and as those simples are not convertible the one into the other, and as they are all as necessary to the things and appearances of nature as well as the laws are, the whole must have had a simultaneous origin. Whether, therefore, we look at the objects or the events in nature, we are alike convinced that they could not of 'themselves have begun, but must have had their origin in ONE, and One greater than them all-One who knew before any of them was in existence how they all were o act, singly or in concert, and what were to be the whole of their appearances, throughout the entire period of their succession. That is the ultimate lesson which concludes the book of nature; and if we read that book far enough " with our own eyes,'' we are sure to arrive at it; and there is tlns consolation in the matter, that instead of our tiring of it, it ceases to be felt as a task, and becomes play, the moment we enter upon it-or, at least, the moment that we become in earnest with it. There are various other principles and properties ~ ·- LIGHT AND HEAT. 12t which it is desirable 1hat they should know who are anxious to observe nature with pleasure and to profit. But they are all either less understood, or less open to the comrr, on observer, than the great principle of gravitation; and so they may be more advantageously noticed along with the substances or the places in which their operations are displayed. Those that perhaps demand the first attention are they which, without any other apparatus than the substances in which their effects are seen, counteract or suspend the general influence of gravi-tation. · SECTION V. Observation of Light and Heat. THE class of agents or agencies (for we have no means of ascertaining whether they are the one or the other-whether they be real things, or me1·e 1ph:nomena of <;>ther. thing~) to which we shall very bnetly allude m this sectiOn, are light, heat, electricity, and some others, which are sometimes (not very sensibly) called "imponderable" substances. Being "ponderable," that is, having weight, is the only real test that our observation can have of what ~e are accustomed to call material substances, that Is, _can be the objects in which those phenomena whtch we are in the habit of calling the effects of the "laws of nature'' can be exhibited or revealed to 1.1s through the medium of the senses. And even weight, though we can feel it, in resistance to our m?scles an~ in the muscles themselves, in more mmute portiOns than we can see with the eye, is yet never felt alone, so as that we can have any know. L |