For him, and such as him,--for us, too, if we
read wisely,--the toiling slaves of science, often working with
little consciousness of the full proportions of the edifice they are
helping to construct, have spent their busy lives. All knowledge
asserts its true dignity when once brought into relation with the
grand end of knowledge,--a wider and deeper view of the significance
of conscious and unconscious created being, and the character of its
Creator.
We shall close this article with some remarks upon the great
doctrines that dominate all the manifold subordinate thoughts which
fill these crowded pages. The plan of creation, Mr. Agassiz maintains,
"has not grown out of the necessary action of physical laws, but was
the free conception of the Almighty Intellect, matured in his
thought before it was manifested in tangible, external forms."
Before Mr. Agassiz, before Linnaeus, before Aristotle, before Plato,
Timaeus the Locrian spake; the original, together with the version
we cite, is given with the Plato of Ficinus:--"Duas esse rerum
omnium causas: mentem quidem, earum quae ratione quadam nascuntur, et
necessitatem, earum quae existunt vi quadam, secundum corporum
potentias et faculitates. Harrum rerum, id est, Natunae bonorum,
optimum esse quoddam rerum optimarum principium, et Deum vocari.
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