(84.) Moreover, as in chemistry we are sometimes compelled to
acknowledge the existence of elements different from those already
identified and known, though we cannot insulate them, and to perceive
that substances have the characters of compounds, and must therefore
be susceptible of analysis, though we do not see how it is to be set
about; so, in physics, we may perceive the complexity of a phenomenon,
without being able to perform its analysis. For example: in magnetism,
the agency of electricity is clearly made out, and they are shown to
stand to one another in the relation of effect and cause. But the
analysis of magnetism, in its relation to particular metals, is not
yet quite satisfactorily performed; and we are compelled to admit
the existence of some cause, whether proximate or ultimate, whose
presence in different metals, or in different states of the same metal,
determines that peculiar electric condition which constitutes permanent
magnetism. Cases like these, of all which science presents, offer the
highest interest. They excite enquiry, like the near approach to the
solution of an enigma; they show us that there is light, could only a
certain veil be drawn aside.
(85.) In pursuing the analysis of any phenomenon, the moment we find
ourselves stopped by one of which we perceive no analysis, and which,
therefore, we are forced to refer (at least provisionally) to the
class of ultimate facts, and to regard as elementary, the study of
that phenomenon and of its laws becomes a separate branch of science.
If we encounter the same elementary phenomenon in the analysis of
several composite ones, it becomes still more interesting, and assumes
additional importance; while at the same time we acquire information
respecting the phenomenon itself, by observing those with which it
is habitually associated, that may help us at length to its analysis.
It is thus that sciences increase, and acquire a mutual relation and
dependency. It is thus, too, that we are at length enabled to trace
parallels and analogies between great branches of science themselves,
which at length terminate in a perception of their dependence on some
common phenomenon of a more general and elementary nature than that
which form the subject of either separately. It was thus, for example,
that, previous to Oërsted’s great discovery of electro-magnetism,
a general resemblance between the two sciences of electricity and
magnetism was recognised, and many of the chief phenomena in each were
ascertained to have their parallels, _mutatis mutandis_, in the other.
It was thus, too, that an analogy subsisting between sound and light
has been gradually traced into a closeness of agreement, which can
hardly leave any reasonable doubt of their ultimate coincidence in one
common phenomenon, the vibratory motion of an elastic medium. If it be
allowed to pursue our illustration from chemistry, and to ground its
application not on what has been, but on what may one day be, done,
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