, it must furnish some
indications of the character of its cause. If, as Plato taught, the
world is a "created image" of the eternal archetypes which dwell in the
uncreated Mind, and if the subjective ideas which dwell in the human
reason, as the offspring of God, are "copies" of the ideas of the
Infinite Reason--if the universe be "the autobiography of the Infinite
Spirit which has also repeated itself in miniature within our finite
spirit," then may we decipher its symbols, and read its lessons straight
off. Then every approach towards a scientific comprehension and
generalization of the facts of the universe must carry us upward towards
the higher realities of reason. The more we can understand of Nature--of
her comprehensive laws, of her archetypal forms, of her far-reaching
plan spread through the almost infinite ages, and stretching through
illimitable space--the more do we comprehend the divine Thought. The
inductive generalization of science gradually _ascends_ towards the
universal; the pure, essential, _a priori_ reason, with its universal
and necessary ideas, _descends_ from above to meet it. The general
conceptions of science are thus a kind of _ideoe umbratiles_--shadowy
assimilations to those immutable ideas which dwell in essential reason,
as possessed by the Supreme Intelligence, and which are participated in
by rational man as the offspring and image of God.

Without making any pretension to profound scientific accuracy, we offer
the following tentative classification of the facts of the universe,
material and mental, which may be regarded as hints and adumbrations of
the ultimate ground, and reason, and cause, of the universe. We shall
venture to classify these facts as indicative of some fundamental
relation; (i.) to Permanent Being or Reality; (ii.) to Reason and
Thought; (iii.) to Moral Ideas and Ends.

(i.) _Facts of the universe which indicate some fundamental relation to
Permanent Being or Reality_.

1. _Qualitative_ Phenomena (properties, attributes, qualities)--the
predicates of a _subject_; which phenomena, being characterized by
likeness and unlikeness, are capable of comparison and classification,
and thus of revealing something as to the nature of the _subject_.

2. _Dynamical_ Phenomena (protension, movement, succession)--events
transpiring in _time_, having beginning, succession, and end, which
present themselves to us as the expression of _power_, and throw back
their distinctive cha