racter to all subordinate parts.

It is thus clearly evident that the very essence of government, of
order, of harmony, of subordination, is the grouping of individual parts
around centres; of these compound units as larger individuals, around
some higher centre again, and so on, until a limit is prescribed by the
very nature of the thing thus organized into an ascending series of
compounds.

This method of grouping and organizing parts into wholes, is, as we have
already seen, the divine method; and, of course, being such, as has also
been said, it is seen in every created object--in minerals, plants,
animals, and in the systems of suns and planets.

It is the method of man's bodily organization, and much more, if
possible, is it the method of his mental organization. Man's mind
consists of powers of affection and thought. His affections, loves,
desires, or whatever they may be termed, all group themselves around
some leading motive, some ruling passion, which is central for a part or
the whole of a lifetime. All minor motives and ends of action are
subordinate, and only subservient as a means to satisfy the central,
dominant passion. They revolve around it, like satellites around their
primary, or like planets around their sun.

His thoughts, likewise--the method of his intellectual operations, obey
the same law. In every subject which he investigates, he marshals a
multitude of facts around central principles or conclusions. He shuts
them up under a general, chief, leading fact or law. A number of
conclusions, again, are marshalled around one still more general and
comprehensive, and thus he mounts up into the highest and most universal
principles. All the knowledge stored away in his mind is thus organized,
almost without his consciousness, into groups of lower and higher facts
and details, ranged under or around their central principles.

The closer and more symmetrical is this grouping of particulars and
generals in the intellect, or, rather, the greater the power thus to
arrange them, the more logical and compactly reasoning is that mind. The
looser and less connected is this grouping, the less logical is the
mind; and when the proper connection fails to be made between
particulars and generals, between facts and their principles, or between
parts and their centre, then the mind is in an idiotic or insane
condition.

Now, man's mental movements, being thus themselves obedient to this
great order-evolving m