could not fail to make some general arrangement and classification of the whole. He would at once distinguish the land from the water, and the green herbage from the naked rock, and the houses from the trees, and the animals from the inanimate objects that surrounded him. If we farther suppose that while he was thus gazing on the scene, the shades of night began to gather around him, it is easy to conceive how many of the nicer lines of distinction which were before so apparent, would now become dim and undiscernible; how the sky would seem to mingle with the ocean; and how the herbage, and the trees, and the houses, and the animals, would be involved in one dark shade of unvaried sameness; and how, where he could before point out many a division, and many a sub-division, two or three grand lineaments, and these but faintly perceptible, would be all he could discern within the whole range of his

survey.

And thus it is with the two grand divisions of philosophy; the philosophy of matter, and the philosophy of mind. In the one we have to do with an external world, where all is luminous and distinct; in the other we have to do with the busy world within, where all is seen as through a glass, darkly. Need we wonder, then, that the one has been far more minutely divided and sub-divided than the other?

Accordingly we find that while mental science has been divided into three parts, viz. Logic, Rhetoric, and Moral Philosophy, the divisions of physical science amount to at least ten times that number.

But not only are the divisions of mental science few, but few as they are, they have been confounded together. And this we think has arisen, not so

much from that obscurity which envelopes the whole subject, as from the intimate connexion with each other of its different departments.

There is here a distinction which we would notice between the physical and mental sciences; that while the materials of the former are widely scattered over the whole face of nature, and seem not to be connected by any common tie; those of the latter have all a reference to a single objectthe human mind. It is thus, that, as among the members of the human body, there exists among all the departments of this latter science, a common sympathy, if we may so speak;-so that if one suffer, all suffer with it; if one is injured, all are injured. And it is this very close connexion which has been the cause of their being confounded together.

To illustrate this, let us suppose that war has been declared against one of two confederate states, and that the inhabitants of the other come promptly forward, to defend the territories of their ally, and that after they have succeeded in beating off the enemy, they still linger in the country, and become gradually so amalgamated with the original inhabitants, that in process of time the two peoples are confounded in one.

Now this, we think, is just what has happened with regard to the moral and intellectual philosophies. Distinctly separate, yet nearly allied; the attack which Mr. Hume made upon the one, struck, though indirectly, at the very vitals of the other, and the champions of moral science wisely took the alarm. It was then first, that with a laudable zeal, they overstepped the limits of their own domain; and had they returned when tranquillity was restored, they had done well. It is

not for going forth to meet a common enemy that we censure them, but because when that enemy was defeated, they still lingered in a foreign land, and forgot to retire within their own peculiar territories.

On the 31st of the same month he read another Essay in the class, on one of the topics of political economy, around which the fertile genius of Dr. Chalmers has thrown a fascination and a splendor, of which the subject was not previously supposed to be susceptible. How thoroughly his pupil was imbued with the ardent spirit of his professor, this Essay most powerfully illustrates. Every reader will form his own judgment of the argument. Of the composition of the paper, and the beauty of the illustration, there can be but one opinion.

ESSAY

ON THE

ANALOGY WHICH SUBSISTS BETWEEN THE OPERATIONS OF NATURE, AND THE OPERATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

It has been said by some writers of natural history, that an antidote to the venom of the serpent is to be found within the body of the animal itself. We know not whether there be any truth in this assertion; but if there be, that must surely be a very beautiful mechanism by which those very organs which produce a deadly poison, produce also a remedy for its fatal effects; and surely that arrangement is a display of the most consummate wisdom by which the efficient cause of an evil is also the efficient cause of its cure.

Now there is a principle very much akin to this, which exists in almost all the operations of nature, a principle to which nature in a great measure owes that constancy for which she has been so greatly admired. The principle we refer to is this,-That an operation of nature

whenever it arrives at that stage in its progress, where its effects would begin to be detrimental, by a very beautiful constitution of things, gives rise to an operation of an opposite tendency, and thus works out a cure for those very evils which itself seemed to threaten. Thus, were we unacquainted with the workings of nature, and did we behold the sun day after day shining on the earth with unclouded splendor; and did we perceive that day after day in consequence of this the soil was becoming more parched; and did we farther know that without moisture, vegetation would cease, and the fruits of the earth could not come to perfection, we might well look forward with the most dismal foreboding to what would seem the inevitable consequence. But how would our fears give place to our admiration of the Creator's wisdom and goodness, when we were told that that sun which we were thus contemplating as the cause of so much misery, was at that very moment gathering by the influence of his rays, the waters of the ocean, and suspending them in mighty reservoirs above us, which would again gently descend over the whole surface of our earth, and thus refresh the drooping plants, and give a new impulse to the economy of vegetation. There is another very beautiful instance of the operation of this principle. When any particular region of the earth begins to be overheated, the air is rarified, -it consequently ascends; the cool air which is around, rushes in to supply its place, and thus does a refreshing breeze blow over that land which had else been in a short time rendered uninhabitable.

And now to apply this to the subject before us. In the operations of political economy, as well as in the operations of nature, there is a beautiful