nature, the foundations, and general
results of inductive science,... we recognise the powers of intellect fitly
employed in the study of nature,... pre-eminently leading us to perceive
_in nature_, and in the invariable and universal constancy of its laws, the
indications of universal, unchangeable, and recondite arrangement,
dependence, and connection in reason....

"We thus see the importance of taking a more enlarged view of the great
argument of natural theology; and the necessity for so doing becomes the
more apparent when we reflect on the injury to which these sublime
inferences are exposed from the narrow and unworthy form in which the
reasoning has been too often conducted....

"The satisfactory view of the whole case can only be found in those more
enlarged conceptions which are furnished by the grand contemplation of
cosmical order and unity, and which do not refer to inferences from the
_past_, but to proofs of the _ever-present_ mind and reason in nature.

"If we read a book which it requires much thought and exercise of reason to
understand, but which we find discloses more and more truth and reason as
we proceed in the study, and contains clearly more than we can at present
comprehend, then undeniably we properly say that thought and reason _exist
in that book_ irrespectively of our minds, and equally so of any question
as to its author or origin. Such a book confessedly exists, and is ever
open to us in the natural world. Or, to put the case under a slightly
different form:--When the astronomer, the physicist, the geologist, or the
naturalist notes down a series of observed facts or measured dates, he is
not an _author_ expressing his own ideas,--he is a mere _amanuensis_ taking
down the dictations of nature: his observation book is the record of the
thoughts of _another mind_: he has but set down literally what he himself
does not understand, or only very imperfectly. On further examination, and
after deep and anxious study, he perhaps begins to decipher the meaning, by
perceiving some law which gives a signification to the facts; and the
further he pursues the investigation up to any more comprehensive theory,
the more fully he perceives that there is a higher reason, of which his own
is but the humbler interpreter, and into whose depths he may penetrate
continually further, to discover yet more profound and invariable order and
system, always indicating still deeper and more hidden abysses yet
unfa