, in unsophisticated
mood, we glance at the nature of this mental discipline--to make room
for which, it will be remembered, so wide a territory is to be laid
waste.

Facts, or phenomena, classed according to their similitude or the law of
their succession--such is the material of science. All enquiry into
causes, into substance, into being, pronounced impertinent and nugatory;
the very language in which such enquiries are couched not allowed,
perhaps, to have a meaning--such is the supreme dictate of the method,
and all men yield to it at least a nominal submission. Very different is
the aspect which science presents to us in these severe generalities,
than when she lectures fluently before gorgeous orreries; or is heard
from behind a glittering apparatus, electrical or chemical; or is seen,
gay and sportive as a child, at her endless game of unwearying
experiment. Here she is the harsh and strict disciplinarian. The
museful, meditative spirit passes from one object of its wonder to
another, and finds, at every pause it makes, that science is as
strenuous in forbidding as in satisfying enquiry. The planet rolls
through space--ask not how!--the mathematician will tell you at what
rate it flies--let his figures suffice. A thousand subtle combinations
are taking place around you, producing the most marvellous
transformations--the chemist has a table of substances, and a table of
proportions--names and figures both--_why_ these transmutations take
place, is a question you should be ashamed to ask. Plants spring up from
the earth, and _grow_, and blossom at your feet, and you look on with
delight, and an unsubduable wonder, and in a heedless moment you ask
what is _life?_ Science will generalize the fact to you--give you its
formula for the expression of _growth, decomposition, and
recomposition_, under circumstances not as yet very accurately
collected. Still you stand gazing at the plant which a short while since
stole through a crevice of the earth, and taking to itself, with such
subtle power of choice, from the soil or the air, the matter that it
needed, fashioned it to the green leaf and the hanging blossom. In vain!
Your scientific monitor calls you from futile reveries, and repeats his
formula of decomposition and recomposition. As _attraction_ in the
planet is known only as a movement admitting of a stated numerical
expression, so _life_ in the plant is to be known only as decomposition
and recomposition taking pl