Few persons, I take it, will dispute this proposition. The road is a long one and beset with all sorts of thorns and briars, such as Mr. Emerson's philosophy will hardly eradicate from the wayside. Even the most refined empiricism will find it difficult to stomach his stomachic theory of the universe, which lands all atomic or corpuscular philosophy in a digestive sac, such as Jack Falstaff bore about him with its measureless capacity for potations and Eastcheap fare. It is a road too in which Mr. Emerson's philosophy will get many sharp raps from an external world of phenomena, in the futility of both his and the Darwinian hypothesis to explain away the independent origination of certain species of plants and animals--new varieties still springing into existence, under favorable conditions, in obedience to the divine fiat, "Let the earth bring forth." In laying the foundations of this new science, if science it shall be called, we must insist that the course of nature is uniform, and that, however extended our generalizations in any one of her lines of uniformity, all intermediate, as well as ultimate propositions, must not only be stated with the utmost scientific accuracy, but the logical deductions therefrom must also be uniform, or lie in the path of uniformity. The earliest and latest inductions must either coincide or approximate the same end. No links must be broken, no chasms bridged, in the scientific series. There must be a distinct and separate link connecting each preceding and each succeeding one in the chain. The lowest known mammal must be found in immediate relationship with his higher congener or brother, not in any remote cousinship. There must be no saltatory progress--no leaping over intermediate steps or degrees. The heights of science are not to be scaled _per saltum_, except as degrees may sometimes be conferred by our universities.[35]