Such a book confessedly exists, and is ever
open to us in the natural world. Or, to put the case under a slightly
different form:--When the astronomer, the physicist, the geologist, or the
naturalist notes down a series of observed facts or measured dates, he is
not an _author_ expressing his own ideas,--he is a mere _amanuensis_ taking
down the dictations of nature: his observation book is the record of the
thoughts of _another mind_: he has but set down literally what he himself
does not understand, or only very imperfectly. On further examination, and
after deep and anxious study, he perhaps begins to decipher the meaning, by
perceiving some law which gives a signification to the facts; and the
further he pursues the investigation up to any more comprehensive theory,
the more fully he perceives that there is a higher reason, of which his own
is but the humbler interpreter, and into whose depths he may penetrate
continually further, to discover yet more profound and invariable order and
system, always indicating still deeper and more hidden abysses yet
unfathomed, but throughout which he is assured the same recondite and
immutable arrangement ever prevails.
"That which requires thought and reason to understand must be itself
thought and reason. That which mind alone can investigate or express must
be itself mind. And if the highest conception attained is but partial, then
the mind and reason studied is greater than the mind and reason of the
student.
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