50. It is worthy of remark, that as we advance in science, we meet numerous points of contact, close relations, which no one at first sight would have suspected. Ancient mathematicians discussed the conic sections, but were far from imagining that the idea of the ellipse could be the basis of a system of astronomy: the foci to them were simple points, the curve a line, and the relations of both the object of combinations at once profitless and without application. Ages pass away, and these foci are the sun, the curve the orbit of planets. The lines on the geometrician's table represented a world! The intimate connection of mathematical and natural science cannot be questioned; and who shall say to what extent both are connected with ontological, psychological, theological, and moral science? The extended scale over which beings are distributed may at first sight seem to be an assemblage of unconnected objects, but seen with the eyes of science, it is perceived to be a delicately worked chain, whose links present, as we advance, greater beauty and perfection. We see the different realms of nature united by close relations: the sciences, of which they are the objects, mutually borrow each other's light, and enter on each other's territory. The complication of objects among themselves involves this complication of science; and the unity of the laws imposed upon different orders of beings makes all sciences approach, and tend to form, one only science. If it were given us to see the identity of their origin, the unity of the end and the simplicity of the means, we should come into the possession of the true transcendental science, the only science which involves all others, or more correctly speaking, the only idea in which every thing is represented as it is, and every thing seen without any necessity of combination, or effort of any kind, just as a magnificent landscape, its outlines, form, and colors are pictured on a perfectly clear mirror. In the meantime, we must rest satisfied with shadows of reality, and must see in the instinctive tendency of our understanding to simplify, to reduce every thing or make it approach as much as possible to unity, the announcement, the sign of this single science, this intuition of the one infinite idea; just as in the desire for happiness which agitates our heart, the thirst after enjoyment which torments us we discover a proof that all is not ended here below, and that our soul has been created for the possession of a good not to be attained in this mortal life.