as not the aspect of an ultimate _principle_; which always
assumes the simplicity and self-evidence of those axioms which
constitute the basis of Geometry."

Now, it is quite true that "ultimate principles," in the common
understanding of the words, always assume the simplicity of geometrical
axioms--(as for "self-evidence," there is no such thing)--but these
principles are clearly _not_ "ultimate;" in other terms what we are in
the habit of calling principles are no principles, properly
speaking--since there can be but one _principle_, the Volition of God. We
have no right to assume, then, from what we observe in rules that we
choose foolishly to name "principles," anything at all in respect to the
characteristics of a principle proper. The "ultimate principles" of
which Dr. Nichol speaks as having geometrical simplicity, may and do
have this geometrical turn, as being part and parcel of a vast
geometrical system, and thus a system of simplicity itself--in which,
nevertheless, the _truly_ ultimate principle is, _as we know_, the
consummation of the complex--that is to say, of the unintelligible--for is
it not the Spiritual Capacity of God?

I quoted Dr. Nichol's remark, however, not so much to question its
philosophy, as by way of calling attention to the fact that, while all
men have admitted _some_ principle as existing behind the Law of
Gravity, no attempt has been yet made to point out what this principle
in particular _is_:--if we except, perhaps, occasional fantastic efforts
at referring it to Magnetism, or Mesmerism, or Swedenborgianism, or
Transcendentalism, or some other equally delicious _ism_ of the same
species, and invariably patronized by one and the same species of
people. The great mind of Newton, while boldly grasping the Law itself,
shrank from the principle of the Law. The more fluent and comprehensive
at least, if not the more patient and profound, sagacity of Laplace, had
not the courage to attack it. But hesitation on the part of these two
astronomers it is, perhaps, not so very difficult to understand. They,
as well as all the first class of mathematicians, were mathematicians
_solely_:--their intellect, at least, had a firmly-pronounced
mathematico-physical tone. What lay not distinctly within the domain of
Physics, or of Mathematics, seemed to them either Non-Entity or Shadow.
Nevertheless, we may well wonder that Leibnitz, who was a marked
exception to the general rule in these respects, and