spoken of a subtle _influence_ which we know to be ever
in attendance upon matter, although becoming manifest only through
matter's heterogeneity. To this _influence_--without daring to touch it
at all in any effort at explaining its awful _nature_--I have referred
the various phaenomena of electricity, heat, light, magnetism; and
more--of vitality, consciousness, and thought--in a word, of spirituality.
It will be seen, at once, then, that the ether thus conceived is
radically distinct from the ether of the astronomers; inasmuch as theirs
is _matter_ and mine _not_.

With the idea of a material ether, seems, thus, to have departed
altogether the thought of that universal agglomeration so long
predetermined by the poetical fancy of mankind:--an agglomeration in
which a sound Philosophy might have been warranted in putting faith, at
least to a certain extent, if for no other reason than that by this
poetical fancy it _had_ been so predetermined. But so far as
Astronomy--so far as mere Physics have yet spoken, the cycles of the
Universe are perpetual--the Universe has no conceivable end. Had an end
been demonstrated, however, from so purely collateral a cause as an
ether, Man's instinct of the Divine _capacity to adapt_, would have
rebelled against the demonstration. We should have been forced to regard
the Universe with some such sense of dissatisfaction as we experience in
contemplating an unnecessarily complex work of human art. Creation would
have affected us as an imperfect _plot_ in a romance, where the
_denoument_ is awkwardly brought about by interposed incidents external
and foreign to the main subject; instead of springing out of the bosom
of the thesis--out of the heart of the ruling idea--instead of arising as
a result of the primary proposition--as inseparable and inevitable part
and parcel of the fundamental conception of the book.

What I mean by the symmetry of mere surface will now be more clearly
understood. It is simply by the blandishment of this symmetry that we
have been beguiled into the general idea of which Maedler's hypothesis is
but a part--the idea of the vorticial indrawing of the orbs. Dismissing
this nakedly physical conception, the symmetry of principle sees the end
of all things metaphysically involved in the thought of a beginning;
seeks and finds in this origin of all things the _rudiment_ of this end;
and perceives the impiety of supposing this end likely to be brought
about less simp