Page:Gods Glory in the Heavens.djvu/69

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LUNAR LANDSCAPE.
53

fully developed in the moon. There are terrestrial configurations, the meaning of which we could not understand, without studying the lunar analogues.

It is to German thought that we owe very much of those generalisations, which have resulted in the recognition of typical forms in nature. It appears very marvellous that men, possessed of very limited acquaintance with science, and often grossly ignorant of its simplest truths, should, as if by inspiration, obtain glimpses of general laws, which have escaped the scrutiny of the most diligent collectors of facts. Oken records the very hour when, reclining on a green sloping bank, and gazing on the bleached skull of a deer, the truth suddenly flashed upon him, that the bones of the cranium were only the repetition of the vertebræ; and this momentary inspiration revolutionised the science of anatomy. But there is another remarkable anticipation of the same philosopher, for which, as far as we know, he has not yet got credit. He declared that the planets and the sun were mutually polar, and that this held also in the case of satellites and their primaries. He gives no intelligible reasons for holding that the sun and moon are magnets; but quite recent investigations have proved the correctness of the oracular dictum of this German dreamer. He died long before this verification; but, probably, such testimony would have moved him little, as his own transcendental grounds of belief were far more satisfactory to his mind, than the empirical in-