It is not, it has not been, perhaps it never will be, understood--how vast a thing is combination. We remember that Euler, and some other profound Prussians, such as Lambert, etc., tax this word _combination_ with a fault: for, say they, it indicates that composition of things which proceeds two by two (viz., com-_bina_); whereas three by three, ten by ten, fifty by fifty, is combination. It is so. But, once for all, language is so difficult a structure, being like a mail-coach and four horses required to turn round Lackington's counter[12]--required in one syllable to do what oftentimes would require a sentence--that it must use the artifices of a short-hand. The word _bini-ae-a_ is here but an exponential or representative word: it stands for any number, for _number_ in short generally as opposed to unity. And the secret truth which some years ago we suggested, but which doubtless perished as pearls to swine, is, that com_bina_tion, or com_terna_tion, or com_quaterna_tion, or com_dena_tion, possesses a mysterious virtue quite unobserved by men. All knowledge is probably within its keeping. What we mean is, that where A is not capable simply of revealing a truth (_i.e._, by way of direct inference), very possible it is that A viewed by the light of B (_i.e._, in some mode of combination with B) shall be capable; but again, if A + B cannot unlock the case, these in combination with C shall do so. And if not A + B + C, then, perhaps, shall A + B + C combined with D; and so on _ad infinitum_; or in other words that pairs, or binaries, ternaries, quaternaries, and in that mode of progression will furnish keys intricate enough to meet and to decipher the wards of any lock in nature.