In considering the study of physical phenomena, not merely in its bearings
on the material wants of life, but in its general influence on the
intellectual advancement of mankind, we find its noblest and most important
result to be a knowledge of the chain of connection, by which all natural
forces are linked together, and made mutually dependent upon each other; and
it is the perception of these relations that exalts our views and ennobles
our enjoyments. Such a result can, however, only be reaped as the fruit of
observation and intellect, combined with the spirit of the age, in which are
reflected all the varied phases of thought. He who can trace, through
by-gone times, the stream of our knowledge to its primitive source, will
learn from history how, for thousands of years, man has labored, amid the
ever-recurring changes of form, to recognize the invariability of natural
laws, and has thus, by the force of mind, gradually subdued a great portion
of the physical world to his dominion. In interrogating the history of the
past, we trace the mysterious course of ideas yielding the first glimmering
perception of the same image of
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a Cosmos, or harmoniously ordered whole, which, dimly shadowed forth to the
human mind in the primitive ages of the world, is now fully revealed to the
maturer intellect of mankind as the result of long and laborious observation.
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