Those who are not prepared to embrace it in its
full extent may probably not accept the conclusions; but they must be sent
back to the school of inductive science, where alone it must be
independently imbibed and thoroughly assimilated with the mind of the
student in the first instance.
"On the slightest consideration of the 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.
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