The earnest investigator delights in the simplicity of numerical relations,
indicating the dimensions of the celestial regions, the magnitudes and
periodical disturbances of the heavenly bodies, the triple elements of
terrestrial magnetism, the mean pressure of the atmosphere, and the quantity
of heat which the sun imparts in each year, and in every season of the year,
to all points of the solid and liquid surface of our planet. These sources
of enjoyment do not, however, satisfy the poet of Nature, or the mind of the
inquiring many. To both of these the present state of science appears as a
blank, now that she answers doubtingly, or wholly rejects as unanswerable,
questions to which former ages deemed they could furnish satisfactory
replies. In her severer aspect, and clothed with less luxuriance, she shows
herself deprived of that seductive charm with which a dogmatizing and
symbolizing physical philosophy knew how to deceive the understanding and
give the rein to imagination. Long before the discovery of the New World,
it was believed that new lands in the Far West might be seen from the shores
of the Canaries and the Azores. These illusive images were owing, not to
any extraordinary refraction of the rays of light, but produced by an eager
longing for the distant and the unattained.
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