Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/425

Rh existence, the sun of science has yet penetrated but through the outer fold of Nature's majestic robe; but if the philosopher were required to separate, from amongst those countless evidences of creative power, one being, the masterpiece of its skill; and from that being to select one gift, the choicest of all the attributes of life;turning within his own breast, and conscious of those powers which have subjugated to his race the external world, and of those higher powers by which he has subjugated to himself that creative faculty which aids his faltering conceptions of a deity,the humble worshipper at the altar of truth would pronounce that being,man; that endowment,human reason.

But however large the interval that separates the lowest from the highest of those sentient beings which inhabit our planet, all the results of observation, enlightened by all the reasonings of the philosopher, combine to render it probable that, in the vast extent of creation, the proudest attribute of our race is but, perchance, the lowest step in the gradation of intellectual existence. For, since every portion of our own material globe, and every animated being it supports, afford, on more scrutinizing inquiry, more perfect evidence of design, it would indeed be most unphilosophical to believe that those sister spheres, obedient to the same law, and glowing with light and heat radiant from the same central sourceand that the members of those kindred systems, almost lost in the remoteness of space, and perceptible only from the countless multitude of their congregated globesshould each be no more than a floating chaos of unformed matter;or, being all the work of