them. We should also bear in mind the precept of Horace: Nil admirari-not to conceive an undue admiration or esteem for any object whatever.

In military tactics, and in the disposition of an army on a march, a general should not make his columns too numerous and too weak, which might render their movements too complicated; nor should they be too strong, as they would then be less manageable, and more tardy in their evolutions.,

The law of the due mean deserves to be attentively considered in every department of the physical, moral and intellectual, social and political world. It manifests itself in the general action of nature, which, according to the expression of a philosopher, balancing the exuberance of reproduction and life by death, keeps the population of the globe within proper limits.

EIGHTH GENERAL LAW.

LAW OF ACTION AND RE-ACTION, OR OF THE UNIVERSAL ALTERNATE MOTION.

In Nature all is Action and Re-action.

THE perfect state of equilibrium, which belongs to the general law that we have just examined, and which may be observed in natural philosophy,

mechanics, medicine, morals, and politics, is the constant result of an alternate motion, or a kind of balancing, to which every thing in nature is subject.

All is action and re-action-every thing has, like the sea, its flood and ebb. The application of this general principle is found in all the sciences: in astronomy, and in the observation of the laws of the motions of the heavenly bodies; in physics, in chemistry, and in individual bodies, or their particles, as in the mechanism of the universe; in medicine, anatomy, and physiology, which consider the actions and re-actions of our humours and solids; in the alternate motions in which the circulation of the blood consists; and, lastly, in the social and political body, as in the human body; in the revolutions of empires, in the moral and political sciences, in nature, and in the arts. It is connected with all the other general laws already treated of.

In mechanics, the equilibrium is the result of a perfect equality of powers, in the action and reaction of two bodies, acting one against the other.

The same principle manifests itself in physiology and medicine. The different parts of the body enjoy that perfect equilibrium which constitutes the state of health, only inasmuch as the

action and re-action between the solids and fluids are then performed with the greatest facility and regularity, and as the parts farthest from the centre of life then possess exactly that degree of energy which suits their destination.

Anatomists consider the osseous system, especially in the skull, as sometimes acting upon the softer parts, at others as being acted upon by them, and in short as alternately influencing and influenced.

In education every thing ought to be alternate and progressive. It is necessary to vary, to alternate, to graduate the habits and exercises of every kind relating to each of the three branches of education, which have a reciprocal action and re-action upon one another.

In metaphysics, every action of things upon the senses seems to be invariably followed by a reaction of the feeling experienced; and vice versa.

In morals, the action and re-action of adverse propensities and passions produce, if nicely balanced, what we term virtue, which always preserves the medium between two extremes-Stat medio virtus.

In political bodies also, the equilibrium depends on the action and re-action of their different parts, which, to form a solid edifice, must mutually

counterpoise and support one another. Here the three laws of the point of support, equilibrium, and action and re-action, are combined.

The action and re-action of the particles of different substances occur in all chemical operations and phænomena; and are likewise observable in astronomy, in the courses and the reciprocal dependence of the luminous spheres which revolve in the heavens.

All nature exhibits innumerable evidences of universal action and re-action in her constant and diversified phænomena, and in the endless chain of vicissitudes, and the continual succession of beings.

In consequence of the same general law, applications of which are incessantly presenting themselves, all causes become in their turn effects, and effects on the other hand become causes. Thus the division of labour, justly considered as the primary and necessary cause of improvement and civilisation, afterwards becomes an effect of that

very civilisation, as it is more and more developed or rather, the improved state of society becomes in its turn a cause of the better application of that division of labour, of which it is the result. Exchanges, or mutual services, which give rise to the social organisation, and which

receive from it a wider extension by the gradual encrease of the means of communication, are in like manner, first a cause, and afterwards an effect of civilisation. We may therefore lay it down as a principle, that every thing is both cause and effect, inasmuch as every thing is action and reaction; which comes under the law of the chain.

Action and re-action, or the alternate passage from facts thoroughly studied, verified, and ascertained, to the reflections and consequences that arise out of them, and from these to new facts, which the two-fold power of well-employed observation and meditation is capable of bringing forth-such is the course to be pursued in general philosophy and in the sciences, in which we ought, according to the direction of Bacon, to traverse by turns the two parts of the ascending and descending ladder.

NINTH GENERAL LAW.

LAW OF THE UNIVERSAL MIXTURE OF, GOOD AND

EVIL.

Every Thing here below is made up of Good and Evil.

THIS principle, of general application and prolific in consequences, is connected with the law of