For, indeed, this point of natural differences in the human dispositions, though, of course, quite overlooked in the moral regimen which is based on _a priori_ knowledge, and is able to dispense with science, and ride over the actual laws; this point of _difference_-- not in the dispositions of individuals only, but the differences which manifest themselves under the varying conditions of age and bodily health, of climate, or other physical differences in the same individual, as well as under the varying moral conditions of differing social and political positions and relations; this so essential point, overlooked as it is in the ordinary practice, has seized the clear eye of this great scientific practitioner, this Master of Arts, and he is making a radical point of it in his new speculation; he is making collections on it, and he will make a main point of it in 'the part operative' of his New Science, when he comes to make out the outline of it elsewhere, referring us distinctly to this place for his collections in it, for his collections on this point, as well as on others not less radical. Lear himself, in his madness, appears, as we have seen already, much disposed to speculate upon this same particular question, which Gloster and Edmund and Kent have already indicated as 'a necessary question of the play'; namely, the question as to '_the causes in nature_' of the phenomena which the social condition of man exhibits; that is, the causes of that degeneracy, that violation of the essential human law to which all the evil is tracked here; and it is the scientific doctrine, that the _nature_ of a thing cannot be successfully studied in itself alone. It is not in water or in air only, or in any other single substance, that we find the nature of _oxygen_, or _hydrogen_, or any other of those principles in nature, which the application of this method to another department evolves from things which present themselves to the unscientific experience as most dissimilar. 'It is the greatest proof of want of skill to investigate _the nature_ of any object in itself alone; for _the same nature_ which seems concealed and hidden in some instances, is manifest and almost palpable in others; and, in general, those very things which are considered as secret, are manifest and common in other objects, but will never be clearly seen if the experiments and conclusions of men be directed to themselves alone': for it is a part of this doctrine, that man is not omitted in the order of nature--that the term HUMAN NATURE is _not_ a misnomer. The doctrine of this Play is, that those same powers which are at work in man's life, are at work without it also; that they are powers which belong, in their highest form, to the nature of things in general; and that man himself, with all his special distinctions, is under the law of that universal constitution. The scientific remedy for the state of things