ver could
have grown into the imposing dimensions which they present to us, but for
the laws of gravitation and the cohesion of part with part. The pillar
would come down, the loftier the more speedily, did not the centre of
gravity fall within its base; and the most admired dome of Palladio or of
Sir Christopher would give way, were it not for the happy principle of the
arch. He surveys the complicated machinery of a single day's arrangements
in a private family; our dress, our furniture, our hospitable board; what
would become of them, he asks, but for the laws of physical nature? Those
laws are the causes of our carpets, our furniture, our travelling, and our
social intercourse. Firm stitches have a natural power, in proportion to
the toughness of the material adopted, to keep together separate portions
of cloth; sofas and chairs could not turn upside down, even if they would;
and it is a property of caloric to relax the fibres of animal matter,
acting through water in one way, through oil in another, and this is the
whole mystery of the most elaborate _cuisine_:--but I should be tedious if
I continued the illustration.

6.

Now, Gentlemen, pray understand how it is to be here applied. I am not
supposing that the principles of Theology and Psychology are the same, or
arguing from the works of man to the works of God, which Paley has done,
which Hume has protested against. I am not busying myself to prove the
existence and attributes of God, by means of the Argument from design. I
am not proving anything at all about the Supreme Being. On the contrary, I
am assuming His existence, and I do but say this:--that, man existing, no
University Professor, who had suppressed in physical lectures the idea of
volition, who did not take volition for granted, could escape a one-sided,
a radically false view of the things which he discussed; not indeed that
his own definitions, principles, and laws would be wrong, or his abstract
statements, but his considering his own study to be the key of everything
that takes place on the face of the earth, and his passing over
anthropology, this would be his error. I say, it would not be his science
which was untrue, but his so-called knowledge which was unreal. He would
be deciding on facts by means of theories. The various busy world, spread
out before our eyes, is physical, but it is more than physical; and, in
making its actual system identical with his scientific analysis, formed o