In Iceland, the sources of heat are still more plentiful; and their proximity to large masses of ice, seems almost to point out the future destiny of that island.  The ice of its glaciers may enable its inhabitants to liquefy the gases with the least expenditure of mechanical force; and the heat of its volcanoes may supply the power necessary for their condensation.  Thus, in a future age, power may become the staple commodity of the Icelanders, and of the inhabitants of other volcanic districts;(6*) and possibly the very process by which they will procure this article of exchange for the luxuries of happier climates may, in some measure, tame the tremendous element which occasionally devastates their provinces.

466.  Perhaps to the sober eye of inductive philosophy, these anticipations of the future may appear too faintly connected with the history of the past.  When time shall have revealed the future progress of our race, those laws which are now obscurely indicated, will then become distinctly apparent; and it may possibly be found that the dominion of mind over the material world advances with an everaccelerating force.

Even now, the imprisoned winds which the earliest poet made the Grecian warrior bear for the protection of his fragile bark; or those which, in more modern times, the Lapland wizards sold to the deluded sailors—­these, the unreal creations of fancy or of fraud, called at the command of science, from their shadowy existence, obey a holier spell:  and the unruly masters of the poet and the seer become the obedient slaves of civilized man.

Nor have the wild imaginings of the satirist been quite unrivalled by the realities of after years:  as if in mockery of the College of Laputa, light almost solar has been extracted from the refuse of fish; fire has been sifted by the lamp of Davy, and machinery has been taught arithmetic instead of poetry.

467.  In whatever light we examine the triumphs and achievements of our species over the creation submitted to its power, we explore new sources of wonder.  But if science has called into real existence the visions of the poet—­if the accumulating knowledge of ages has blunted the sharpest and distanced the loftiest of the shafts of the satirist, the philosopher has conferred on the moralist an obligation of surpassing weight.  In unveiling to him the living miracles which teem in rich exuberance around the minutest atom, as well as throughout the largest masses of ever-active matter, he has placed before him resistless evidence of immeasurable design.  Surrounded by every form of animate and inanimate existence, the sun of science has yet penetrated but through the outer fold of nature’s majestic robe; but if the philosopher were required to separate, from amongst those countless evidences of creative power, one being, the masterpiece of its skill; and from that being to select one gift, the choicest of all the attributes of life; turning within his own breast, and conscious of those powers which have subjugated to his race the external world, and of those higher powers by which he has subjugated to himself that creative faculty which aids his faltering conceptions of a deity, the humble worshipper at the altar of truth would pronounce that being, man; that endowment, human reason.