between 21 and 22, the probability is that we shall find no increase at all; and in strict keeping with our geological logic, we may now infer, (what many a philosopher has not hesitated to infer of the world,) that our youth is not only older than the wandering Jew, but in point of fact has existed, as the glib saying is, from all eternity. But this is absurd; and similarly absurd are the consequences of the denial of series of series in any of the other laws or parts of nature.

And here it may be observed that human life furnishes us with the best type of the law of series. Infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, these, in their wonderful continuity, variety and combination, are the flower and fruit of the mundane system. In each individual we see the unbroken line of a life-series, we see a different form, function, and velocity at different points of the line, and finally by the presence in the mind of all that has preceded, and the outward sympathy of old age with childhood, we see the series become compound or circular, and return into itself by death, but only to commence anew, and to fulfil the law of progress and mirror the image of God, by an immortal perpetuity of the principles of order.

One of the great benefits accruing from the recognition of series is this, that it brings in its train an unfailing belief in the doctrine of universal analogy. For the finite creation, which includes in one, man and nature, can only be a series, by a mutual relation between all its parts, by virtue of which everything has its own place, and cannot at a given time occupy any other. And as the belief in a unity of principle in nature, lies at the root of a possibility of attaining general and universal laws, so the distribution of harmonies by series, is all with reference to one end, or what is the same thing, to a series of ends, which in the bosom of their unanimity and hearty cooperation are veritably one. The varieties of nature, therefore, are but different illustrations of one manifold principle. Some things present the principle more openly than others, constituting as it were the face of nature; in some it is hidden under various garments, which also have their offices, and are woven and assumed, every one, according to the same gradual rule which regulates all the unbounded munificence of the Creator.

Moreover, series not only includes co-ordination of things, but their subordination also; and their subordination is not simply a precedence which some existences take of others, but it demonstrates that the lower have sprung from the higher, and are indeed their produce. Thus the universe is seen to be connected from end to end, and from above to below, and all things in illustrating one principle also illustrate each other. What is compressed and involved and a unit in the higher sphere, becomes expanded and developed and distinctly various in the region below; and thus the lower is intended to enrich our knowledge of the higher with variety, and the higher to give life, oneness and combination to our conceptions of the lower. All things are to be enriched, according to their own measure of appropriation, with the predicates of all things, in order that a certain universality may endow the whole body of the sciences, and every nature proffer its torch to light up with a first light some obscure chamber in the faculties of man. The means to this consists in the perception of analogies, which enable us to move with rapid feet over great tracts of knowledge, from the least parts of things, to the least parts of society, or to human beings, and to the whole collective man, and to the great atoms of nature, I mean, the universes. For all these are in a series, and shed light upon each other, and their laws are only different, because the modes are various in which they subserve the one end of the divine love. But as the end is the same, so they are all analogous, because they are all working it out. Therefore, whatever we find in one thing in one manner, exists we know in all things after the manner of each; whence we revert once more to the great law, that everything is in a series, and is a series. Thus series conducts us to analogy, and analogies lead us deeper into series.

The intuition of both these laws has doubtless been always in the world, for if they were lost entirely, the human mind would be paralyzed. Thus an old writer, one of those called a mystic, has the following thought: "When," says he, "I take up a stone or clod of earth and look upon it; then I see that which is above, and that which is below, yea, the whole world therein; onely that in each thing one property hapneth

to be the chiefest and manifest; according to which it is named; all the other properties are joyntly therein; onely in distinct degrees and centres, and yet all the degrees and centres are but one onely centre; there is but one onely root whence all things proceed." In which dictum honest Jacob Behmen gives no contemptible statement of the ground of series and degrees.

The lively interest which series extends to every object that comes within its reach, has been illustrated in a simple manner by a modern writer. "Various authors," says he, “have proclaimed the powers of progressive arrangement and connexion: it gives a charm even to things which would otherwise be destitute of it. For example, we see with indifference a collection of half a dozen children; but if we learn that they are six brothers, of the respective ages of 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 years, and proportionably related in figure and height, the progressive connection thus made known, lends them an unexpected interest. If three other brothers join them, of the ages of 4, 5 and 6, and form a series connected to the first, the interest increases, and is reflected on the three new comers: they become trebly more interesting than they would have been alone. The charm will increase in the same ratio if three more brothers of the family, of the ages of 13, 14 and 15 join the band, and form a new series, or another wing to the centre consisting of the six first.

"If with these twelve brothers we compare twelve other children who are deprived of the graduated relation of brotherhood, we shall find that the sight of the latter twelve will excite comparatively no interest. Thus graduation gives a special charm to the most indifferent things; and indeed the learned must have been well convinced of this, for they all abide by Horace's maxim: "Tantum series juncturaque pollet," &c.; and endeavor in every way to classify the details of nature and art in degrees and series."

This is a happy and an easy illustration of the novel pleasure which series confers upon all objects, in which pleasure we

cannot fail to see a new hope for the common memory, of retaining, if not the present facts, at all events those more numerous facts which series itself brings to light.

Before I close these superficial commendations of this weighty doctrine, I wish to direct your attention for a moment to the ill effects which have arisen from the use of single methods in the sciences, where in truth a number of different methods are needed, proper to each phrase and division of the subject in hand. These effects may be shewn even in that first stage of science, which consists in the collection or simple addition of facts. Now what are the present facts of physiology, and where do they come from? We answer that they are almost entirely the produce of the dissecting-room. Hence the doctrine of physiology is a city of the dead, a scientific necropolis. It is true that anatomy is the first resort of physiology; that it gives us the bodily shapes as nothing else can do. But besides bare anatomy, are there no other means of exploring the body? Are the bodily senses to be expected to exhaust that machine of which those senses are themselves amongst the lowest powers? Is there not a series of senses of which reason is one, and does not reason deal with the actions and fruits of things, as corporeal sense takes cognizance of their passions and surfaces? Wherefore then should the motions and works of the different organs not furnish their own quota to the foundations of physiology? It is to be observed that the uses, effects, actions, movements or works of things, are far more richly illustrative of their secret natures, than are their shapes or appearances. Hence Swedenborg commences his greatest physiological treatise with these memorable words: "The use or effect," says he, "which produces the end, must be the first object of analytic enquiry. The nature of the member or organ is known from the use. The use determines what the organ is in itself, or in its own form; what it is, in series, with other organs which are contiguous to it or surround it, and which continuously precede and continuously follow it; and what it is, in order, with those which are above and below, or prior and posterior to it. All these, and their uses, indicate the nature of the organ under investigation. The use and end are the first things that manifest

themselves; the end being all in all in every stage of the progress from first to last; the very soul of the thing."* It is therefore the uses of things which constitute the noblest materials for induction, and the movements which produce them serve afterwards, by their investigation, to carry detail into our general knowledge of the uses. As it is, however, the minutiæ and subtleties of anatomy are used as instruments to invalidate our common knowledge of uses, and as the given uses are not taken for granted, so the motions or activities which produce them are not enquired into, or even suspected to exist. It is therefore a melancholy fact, that in all physiological works, with the single exception of Swedenborg's, it is only the passivity, sleep, rest or death of the body which is represented, and by no means that one distinctive endowment which it possesses, of life and motion. But what, think you, would be the condition of chemistry, if the chemists spent their time in scraping and sawing and filing natural bodies, and looking at the little fragments, first on the one side and then on the other, with the naked eye and with the microscope, without trying to ascertain their actions and combinations with other bodies, or putting them through a series of circumstances in which each substance can shew its virtues by effecting some change in other substances, and undergoing some alteration in its own accidental or essential conditions? Such a collection of chemical facts might be an envied possession for the virtuoso, and constitute perhaps no mean lining for a cabinet in some curious man's drawing room, but I suspect it would find a much lower value and place in the mansion of the sciences. And so it must be with anatomy and physiology considered as parts of the understanding of nature. In this regard their value is small, and they are to be looked upon merely as incentives to some of the mildest forms of monomania, and their votaries numbered with other collectors of autographs, coins, seals, shells, and other odd or agreeable things, which yet are far from useless for more purposes than their owners dream.

But surely it hardly requires a word to prove that the use of

The Animal Kingdom, considered anatomically, physically and philosophically, n. 32, vol. i., p. 33.