that, to Newton we owe it, and by aid of this supposition too, that the moon is of use in finding longitude. He himself clearly shows that when he talks about matter pulling matter, he means that matter, no matter how, does move and change place as it would do if it had all these pulls upon it. Gravity, says he the cause of these motions-exists and acts, but I have not yet found out the cause of it. Many of his followers believe in the very pull; and all the early opponents of course took the theory in this sense.

Suppose Newton had merely collected his facts; where should we have been now? A person who knows the lunar theory would smile at the idea of a speculator of 1660 presented with two hundred years of accurate meridian* observations of the sun, moon, and planets, at two remote observatories, and requested to make an inductive astronomy out of them which should give equally accurate predictions for time to come. He would smile again when he remembers the state of meteorology. For many a year have observations been made with all that ends in ometer; thermometer, barometer, hygrometer, eudiometer, anemometer, &c. And good has been done by it but where is our science? Who can make the weather of the last three months predict that of to-morrow?

* James II. has had great notoriety as an actual administrator of naval affairs but few can remember how much is due to Charles II., when they think of the progress of navigation. I hardly know whether this may not be the first place in which the three royal foundations are pointedly mentioned together: and of these the second and third were not merely promoted by the king, but called into existence by the man. First, the Royal Society, which by strong pressure induced Newton not merely to print but to write the Principia. Secondly, the Royal Observatory, from which came the few lunar observations which were essential to Newton's work: and no such observations had ever been made before. Thirdly, the Royal Mathematical School, attached to Christ's Hospital, for the education of navigators.

He will not have to wait for fame until he can acknowledge it only per tabulas et crepas. When Murphy's almanac foretold the coldest day of the winter, the public, as soon as they saw that the day named was colder than any that had gone before, did not wait to try the future, but thronged to buy in such crowds that the police were called in to keep order. The time may come when some weather Newton, with an atrocious theory, and access to one year's observations of some observatory, may point out the direction of progress. Never has any way been made by observation alone. Facts have sometimes started a theory; but until sagacity had conjectured, divined, guessed, surmised for more choices, see Roget, § 514-what they pointed to, the facts were a mob, and not an army.

Some theory, then, is essential: a bad one may lead to discovery. The Ptolemaic hypotheses improved astronomy. Of the two great theories of light, emanation and undulation, one must be wrong, if not both: but both have added largely to knowledge. The time may come when a step nearer to the

* At present it seems more likely that attraction will drive out matter, by and with the aid of repulsion. The current of physical philosophy sets towards Priestley's notion that an atom is but a centre of attraction and repulsion, a terminus ad quem for a pull, a terminus a quo for a push. Well! but surely there is something to be pushed and pulled, to push and pull. Here will arise in due season a dispute parallel to that which is attached to the names of Collier and Berkeley. What a comfort it should be to think that this source never can run dry. Go as far as we may, we shall always be able to raise the question whether we have arrived at the direct action of Deity, or whether we are still in second causes. I speak of this life: of the future state we are informed by some theologians, but quite out of their own heads, that all wants will be supplied without effort, and all doubts resolved without thought. This a state! not a bit of it: a mere phase of nonexistence; annihilation with a consciousness of it, such as I shall presently allude to. The rapping spirits know better than that; their views, should they really be human impostures, are very, very singular.

first cause shall raise a smile whenever gravitation is mentioned the time may come when attraction shall be saddled with some contemptuous nickname, say the pully-hauly crankum. But this will only be done by the pseudosophs: those who add wisdom to knowledge will be able to remember what this then to be called → pure theory has added to the stock of power. The number 999 of the day, when he writes against number 1001, will twit him with being one who 'ought rather to have lived in the days of our well-meaning, but blinded, ancestors, who were duped by the notion of matter attracting (!) matter.'

The followers of a theory are of two kinds; both equally apt to use it with effect. There are those who hold it tentatively, as consolidating existing knowledge, and suggesting the direction of inquiry: there are those who believe in it as representing the true cause. The first may be the wiser; but the second are likely to be the more energetic. Now the spiritualists, so called, meaning all who receive the facts, or some of them, as facts, may be divided into those who believe that the communications are spiritual, those who do not see what else they can be, and those who do not see what they can be. All who inquire further, let them think what they may, will, if they shape their inquiries upon the spiritual hypothesis, be sound imitators of those who led the way in

In spite of the inconsistencies, the eccentricities, and the puerilities which some of them have exhibited, there is a uniform vein of description running through their accounts which, supposing it to be laid down by a combination of impostors, is more than remarkable, even marvellous. The agreement is one part of the wonder, it being remembered that the 'mediums' are scattered through the world; but the other and greater part of it is that the impostors, if impostors they be, have combined to oppose all the current ideas of a future state, in order to gain belief in the genuineness of their pretensions.

physical science, in the old time. I do not speak of those who suspect imposture: to them it belongs to invent catch-tests. I do not speak of those who think they can set out with a view of the naturally possible and impossible; they can arrive at their conclusions by pure logic: let them learn Barbara, Celarent, &c. with all speed, and set about imitating those of the schoolmen who have made the name of their whole order a by-word. But to those who know the truth of facts, and who do not know what can and cannot be exact sciences—it will appear on reflexion that the most probable direction of inquiry, the best chance of eliciting a satisfactory result, is that which is suggested by the spirit hypothesis. I mean the hypothesis that some intelligence, which is not that of any human beings clothed in flesh and blood, has a direct share in the phenomena.

at least out of the

Take this hypothesis on its own à priori probability, and compare it with that of attraction. Suppose a person wholly new to both subjects, wholly undrilled both in theology and in physics. He is to choose between two assertions, one true and one false, and to lose his life if he choose the false one. The first assertion is that there are incorporeal intelligences in the universe, and that they sometimes communicate with men: the second is that the particles of the stars in the milky way give infinitesimal permanent pulls to the particles on our earth. I suspect that most, even among those who have all existing prepossessions, would feel rather puzzled to know which they would have chosen, had they been situated as above described.

The simple form of the hypothesis, namely, the cooperation of an intelligence which is not that of living human beings, is far too elementary to be the pabulum of most persons: they could as soon make pure nitrogen do the work of nitrogenised food. We must have something more positive than this.

Accordingly, some will have the phenomena to be, as the phenomena themselves declare, caused by departed spirits; some have recourse to infernal agency. Angels, and such intermediate spirits as fairies, &c., have not, I believe, been called in. I have been told of a hardy speculator who is preparing to give the world the theory that all matter thinks, and that the atmosphere is competent to be the cause of the asserted communications. All this is quite in the spirit of philosophy, as times go. My state of mind, which refers the whole either to unseen intelligence, or something which man has never had any conception of, proves me to be out of the pale* of the Royal Society. I could bring a very long list of names, including some of the most celebrated of our own day, who have made it, some their principle and all their practice, to take all the imaginable causes of a known effect, and to declare, or to act as if they declared, that one of them must be. They can no more keep a set of facts uninvested in a theory, than a person of the usual prudence can hold back his money when a mania for speculation is in the market. 'For Heaven's sake,' said the people at the time when the South Sea

*The letters F.R.S., of which everybody knows the English meaning, have two esoteric significations. My more learned reader knows the old distinction between in re and in ratione. Locking at the homo trium literarum, the thief of the secrets of nature, as a follower of natural knowledge, a promoter of man's power over matter, and an augmenter of the conveniences of life, he well deserves the honourable title of Fautor Realis Scientiæ. But when I turn to the mental side of the question, and consider the action of his physics, as presented by himself, upon the mind and thought of man, I see what induces me to think the time must come when one of his predicates will be False Rationis Sacerdos. No blame upon him. To every system its proper time and place. The old schoolmen manured the ground; he has raised a plentiful crop; and the time will come when there will be bread, leavened bread, and plenty for all.