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already knows. When a lizard runs away frightened from before your footsteps, you may know positively that it will fly to its hole; but your knowledge does not affect its purpose; nor would it, if your knowledge were as certain as Omniscience. If you ask me why, if man's choice will be bad, the Omnipotent does not will it to be good, I say, it is to leave him that very freedom of choice which you deny. Further, if there were no evil in the world, moral or physical, and it would be easy to show that one cannot exist without the other, what would the world be?

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There would be no virtue, because there could be no possibility of vice; there would be no passions, because there would be nothing to excite them; there would be no wishes, because, privation being an evil, no desire for any thing could possibly exist; there could be no motion, for the movement of one thing would displace another, which was in its proper place before; there would be no action, for, there being neither passions nor wishes, nothing would prompt action. In short, the argument might be carried on to show that the universe would not be, and that the whole would be God alone. No one will deny that the least imperfection is in itself evil, and that, unless God created what was equal to himself, which implies, as far as the act of creation goes, a mathematical impossibility, whatever he created must have been subject to imperfection, and consequently would admit of evil. Evil once admitted, all the rest follows; and if any one dare to ask, "why, then, God created at all," let him look round on the splendid universe, the thousand magnificent effects of divine love, of divine bounty, and of divine power, and feel himself rebuked for thinking that such attributes could slumber unexerted.

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JAMES.

Physical, pertaining to nature or natural productions, or to material things, as opposed to things moral or imaginary; a physical body or substance, is a material body or substance, in distinction from spirit, or metaphysical substance: al, 68.

63. Observation.

ACCORDING to Bacon, man is ignorant of every thing antecedent to observation: and there is not a single department of inquiry, in which he does not err the moment that he abandons it. It is true that the greater part of every individual's knowledge is derived immediately from testimony; but still it is from testimony that brings home to his conviction the observation of others. Still it is observation which lies at the bottom of his knowledge. Still it is man taking his lesson from the actual condition of the thing which he contemplates- a condition that is altogether independent of his will, and which no speculation of his can modify or destroy There is an obstinacy in the processes of nature which he cannot control. He must follow it.

The construction of a system should not be a creative, but an imitative process, which is founded only on the lessons of experience, and admits nothing but what evidence assures us to be true. It is not by the exercise of a sublime and speculative ingenuity that man arrives at truth. It is by letting himself down to the drudgery of observation. It is by descending to the sober work of seeing, and feeling, and experimenting. Wherever, in short, he has not had the benefit of his own observation, or the observation of others brought home to his conviction by credible testimony, there he is ignorant.

This is found to hold true even in those sciences where the objects of inquiry are the most familiar and the most accessible. Before the right method of philosophizing was acted upon, how grossly did philosophers misinterpret the phenomena of external nature, when a steady perseverance in the path of observation could have led them to infallible certainty! How misled in their conception of every thing around them, when, instead of making use of their senses, they delivered themselves up to the exercises of a solitary abstraction, and thought to explain every thing by the fantastic play of

unmeaning terms and imaginary principles! And when, at last, set on the right path of discovery, how totally different were the results of actual observation from those systems which antiquity had rendered venerable, and the authority of great names had recommended to the acquiescence of many centuries!

This proves that, even in the most familiar subjects, mau knows every thing by observation, and is ignorant of every thing without it; and that he cannot advance a single footstep in the acquirement of truth, till he bid adieu to the delusions of theory, and sternly refuse indulgence to its fondest anticipations.

Thus there is both a humility and a hardihood in the philosophical temper. They are the same in principle, though different in display. The first is founded on a sense of ignorance, and disposes the mind of the philosopher to pay the most respectful attention to every thing that is offered in the shape of evidence. The second consists in a determined purpose to reject and to sacrifice every thing that offers to oppose the influence of evidence, or to set itself up against its legitimate and well-established conclusions.

In the ethereal whirlpools of Des Cartes, we see a transgression against the humility of the philosophical character. It is the presumption of knowledge on a subject where the total want of observation should have confined him to the modesty of ignorance. In the Newtonian system of the world we see both humility and hardihood. Sir Isaac commences his investigation with all the modesty of a respectful inquirer. His is the docility of a scholar who is sensible that he has all to learn. He takes his lesson as experience offers it to him, and yields a passive obedience to the authority of this great schoolmaster.

It is in an obstinate adherence to the truth which his master has given him, that the hardihood of the philosophical character begins to appear. We see him announce, with entire confidence, both the fact and its legitimate consequences We see him not discouraged by the singularity of his

conclusions, and quite unmindful of that host of antipathies which the reigning taste and philosophy of the times. mustered up to oppose him. We see him resisting the influence of every authority but the authority of experience. We see that the beauty of the old system had no power to charm him from that process of investigation by which he destroyed it. We see him sitting upon its merits with the severity of a judge, unmoved by all those graces of simplicity and magnificence which the sublime genius of its inventor had thrown around it.

We look upon these two constituents of the philosophical temper as forming the best preparation for finally terminating in the decided Christian. In appreciating the pretensions of Christianity, there is a call, both upon the humility and the hardihood of every inquirer; the humility which feels its own ignorance, and submits without reserve to whatever comes before it in the shape of authentic and well-established evidence; and the hardihood, which sacrifices every taste and every prejudice at the shrine of conviction, which defies the scorn of a pretended philosophy, which is not ashamed of a profession that some conceive to be degraded by the homage of the superstitious vulgar, which can bring down its mind to the homeliness of the gospel, and renounce, without a sigh, all that is elegant, and splendid, and fascinating, in the speculations of moralists.

In attending to the complexion of the Christian argument, we are widely mistaken if it is not precisely that kind of argument, which will be most readily admitted by those whose minds have been trained to the soundest habits of philosophical investigation; and if that spirit of cautious and sober-minded inquiry, to which modern Science stands indebted for all her triumphs, is not the very identical spirit which leads us to "cast down all our lofty imaginations, and to bring every thought into the captivity of the obedience of Christ."

CHALMERS.

64. The Wind.

THE wind has a language I would I could learn:
Sometimes 'tis soothing, and sometimes 'tis stern;
Sometimes it comes like a low, sweet song,

And all things grow calm, as the sound floats along
And the forest is lulled by the dreamy strain,
And slumber sinks down on the wandering main,
And its crystal arms are folded in rest,
And the tall ship sleeps on its heaving breast.

Sometimes, when autumn grows yellow and sear,
And the sad clouds weep for the dying year,
It comes like a wizard, and mutters its spell,
I would that the magical tones I might tell,-
And it beckons the leaves with its viewless hand,
And they leap from the branches at its command,
And follow its footsteps with wheeling feet,
Like fairies that dance in the moonlight sweet

Sometimes it comes in the wintry night,
And I hear the flap of its pinions of might,
And I see the flash of its withering eye,

As it looks from the thunder-cloud sailing on high,
And pauses to gather its fearful breath,

And lifts up its voice like the angel of death;
And the billows leap up when the summons they hear,
And the ship flies away, as if wingéd with fear;

And the uncouth creatures, that dwell in the deep,
Start up, at the sound, from their floating sleep,

And career through the waters, like clouds through the night,
To share in the tumult their joy and delight;
And when the moon rises, the ship is no more;
Its joys and its sorrows are vanished and o'er,
And the fierce storm that slew it has faded away,

Like the dark dream that flies from the light of the day

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