similar to the Seen.  No:  to this designer let us give a name that does not command our bewildering associations, and the mystery becomes more clear—­that name is necessity.  Necessity, say the Greeks, compels the gods.  Then why the gods?—­their agency becomes unnecessary—­dismiss them at once.  Necessity is the ruler of all we see—­power, regularity—­these two qualities make its nature.  Would you ask more?—­you can learn nothing:  whether it be eternal—­whether it compel us, its creatures, to new careers after that darkness which we call death—­we cannot tell.  There leave we this ancient, unseen, unfathomable power, and come to that which, to our eyes, is the great minister of its functions.  This we can task more, from this we can learn more:  its evidence is around us—­its name is nature.  The error of the sages has been to direct their researches to the attributes of necessity, where all is gloom and blindness.  Had they confined their researches to Nature—­what of knowledge might we not already have achieved?  Here patience, examination, are never directed in vain.  We see what we explore; our minds ascend a palpable ladder of causes and effects.  Nature is the great agent of the external universe, and Necessity imposes upon it the laws by which it acts, and imparts to us the powers by which we examine; those powers are curiosity and memory—­their union is reason, their perfection is wisdom.  Well, then, I examine by the help of these powers this inexhaustible Nature.  I examine the earth, the air, the ocean, the heaven:  I find that all have a mystic sympathy with each other—­that the moon sways the tides—­that the air maintains the earth, and is the medium of the life and sense of things—­that by the knowledge of the stars we measure the limits of the earth—­that we portion out the epochs of time—­that by their pale light we are guided into the abyss of the past—­that in their solemn lore we discern the destinies of the future.  And thus, while we know not that which Necessity is, we learn, at least, her decrees.  And now, what morality do we glean from this religion?—­for religion it is.  I believe in two deities—­Nature and Necessity; I worship the last by reverence, the first by investigation.  What is the morality my religion teaches?  This—­all things are subject but to general rules; the sun shines for the joy of the many—­it may bring sorrow to the few; the night sheds sleep on the multitude—­but it harbors murder as well as rest; the forests adorn the earth—­but shelter the serpent and the lion; the ocean supports a thousand barks—­but it engulfs the one.  It is only thus for the general, and not for the universal benefit, that Nature acts, and Necessity speeds on her awful course.  This is the morality of the dread agents of the world—­it is mine, who am their creature.  I would preserve the delusions of priestcraft, for they are serviceable to the multitude; I would impart to man the arts I discover, the sciences I perfect; I would speed the