have learned their
polities and the play of their powers. We live upon a ball of 8,000
miles in diameter, swathed by an atmosphere of unknown height. This
ball has been molten by heat, chilled to a solid, and sculptured by
water. It is made up of substances possessing distinctive properties
and modes of action, which offer problems to the intellect, some
profitable to the child, others taxing the highest powers of the
philosopher. Our native sphere turns on its axis, and revolves in
space. It is one of a band which all do the same. It is illuminated
by a sun which, though nearly a hundred millions of miles distant, can
be brought virtually into our closets and there subjected to
examination. It has its winds and clouds, its rain and frost, its
light, heat, sound, electricity, and magnetism. And it has its vast
kingdoms of animals and vegetables. To a most amazing extent the
human mind has conquered these things, and revealed the logic which
runs through them. Were they facts only, without logical
relationship, science might, as a means of discipline, suffer in
comparison with language. But the whole body of phenomena is instinct
with law; the facts are hung on principles, and the value of physical
science as a means of discipline consists in the motion of the
intellect, both inductively and deductively, along the lines of law
marked out by phenomena. As regards the discipline to which I have
already referred as derivable from the study of languages,--that, and
more, is involved in the study of physical science. Indeed, I believe
it would be possible so to limit and arrange the study of a portion of
physics as to render the mental exercise involved in it almost
qualitatively the same as that involved in the unravelling of a
language.

I have thus far confined myself to the purely intellectual side of
this question. But man is not all intellect. If he were so, science
would, I believe, be his proper nutriment. But he feels as well as
thinks; he is receptive of the sublime and beautiful as well as of the
true. Indeed, I believe that even the intellectual action of a
complete man is, consciously or unconsciously, sustained by an
undercurrent of the emotions. It is vain to attempt to separate the
moral and emotional from the intellectual. Let a man but observe
himself, and he will, if I mistake not, find that in nine cases out of
ten, the emotions constitute the motive force which pushes his
intellect i