leaves the doctrine behind him in his own experience; and all men feel sometimes the falsehood which they cannot demonstrate.  Few men are wiser than they know.  That which they hear in schools and pulpits without afterthought, if said in conversation, would probably be questioned in silence.  If a man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the divine laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys well enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his incapacity to make his own statement.

I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to record some facts that indicate the path of the law of Compensation; happy beyond my expectation, if I shall truly draw the smallest arc of this circle.

POLARITY,[97] or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of the animal body; in the systole and diastole[98] of the heart; in the undulations of fluids, and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity.  Superinduce magnetism at one end of a needle; the opposite magnetism takes place at the other end.  If the south attracts, the north repels.  To empty here, you must condense there.  An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as, spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay.

Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts.  The entire system of things gets represented in every particle.  There is somewhat that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each individual of every animal tribe.  The reaction, so grand in the elements, is repeated within these small boundaries.  For example, in the animal kingdom the physiologist has observed that no creatures are favorites, but a certain compensation balances every gift and every defect.  A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from another part of the same creature.  If the head and neck are enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short.

The theory of the mechanic forces is another example.  What we gain in power is lost in time; and the converse.  The periodic or compensating errors of the planets is another instance.  The influences of climate and soil in political history is another.  The cold climate invigorates.  The barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers, or scorpions.