oint of M M, with its east, or pole of contraction, and
_d_ its west, or pole of diffluence and expansion--we have presented to us
the universal quadruplicity, or four elemental forms of power; in the
endless proportions and modifications of which, the innumerable offspring
of all-bearing Nature consist. Wisely docile to the suggestions of Nature
herself, the ancients significantly expressed these forces under the names
of earth, water, air, and fire; not meaning any tangible or visible
substance so generalized, but the powers predominant, and, as it were, the
living basis of each, which no chemical decomposition can ever present to
the senses, were it only that their interpenetration and co-inherence
first constitutes them sensible, and is the condition and meaning of
a--_thing_. Already our more truly philosophical naturalists (Ritter, for
instance) have begun to generalize the four great elements of chemical
nomenclature, carbon, azote, oxygen, and hydrogen: the two former as the
positive and negative pole of the magnetic axis, or as the power of fixity
and mobility; and the two latter as the opposite poles, or plus and minus
states of cosmical electricity, as the powers of contraction and
dilatation, or of comburence and combustibility. These powers are to each
other as longitude to latitude, and the poles of each relatively as north
to south, and as east to west. For surely the reader will find no distrust
in a system only because Nature, ever consistent with herself, presents us
everywhere with harmonious and accordant symbols of her consistent
doctrines. Nothing would be more easy than, by the ordinary principles of
sound logic and common sense, to demonstrate the impossibility and expose
the absurdity of the corpuscularian or mechanic system, or than to prove
the intenable nature of any intermediate system. But we cannot force any
man into an insight or intuitive possession of the true philosophy,
because we cannot give him abstraction, intellectual intuition, or
constructive imagination; because we cannot organize for him an eye that
can see, an ear that can listen to, or a heart that can feel, the
harmonies of Nature, or recognise in her endless forms, the thousand-fold
realization of those simple and majestic laws, which yet in their
absoluteness can be discovered only in the recesses of his own spirit,--not
by that man, therefore, whose imaginative powers have been _ossified_ by
the continual reaction and assim