Page:M F Maury address before the Philodemic Society.pdf/12

 the thing endowed enlarges itself, and overcomes the force of gravitation. It is the imponderables, as light, heat, and electricity, which gives this power, which enables the trees to lift themselves above the earth, and high up in the air to stretch forth their arms to heaven, despite the forces of gravitation. These are the agents which give animation to things here below, impart motion and preserve harmony among the spheres in the firmament above.

Following up the idea thus expressed by nature, men of science, operating with the same agents, have produced such revolutions in the moral world, have so enlarged the boundaries of knowledge, and that, too, at a rate so rapid, and in a time so short, that if the sages of but one generation ago could be brought back to life among us, they would find themselves at fault in a thousand ways. Discoveries and inventions, founded on principles of which the wisest of them were ignorant, would meet them at every turn. In the place of old dogmas, they would discover theories and doctrines to them entirely new. Such have been the acquisitions to knowledge and the achievements of science since their day, that to overtake us they would find themselves, instead of teachers, cloistered students. Notwithstanding the contrast, we are not yet out of the woods. We see here and there a light spot, it is true; still the views of which we boast are made through narrow openings and a misty medium. At least we may so infer, for the view is actually expanding before our eyes.

But limited though they be, where is the country to which these discoveries do not extend, or what, the mind not utterly barren and opake that they have not enlightened and improved?

They are heard on the sea, they are seen on the land; and though not so obvious, their impress is as palpable upon