GENERAL AND PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS

1. External nature, when spoken of in contradistinction to mind, suggests chiefly, if not solely, the idea of the material universe. Even though restricted to this limited and proper sense of the term, we should still behold the proofs of beneficent design in the fitnesses of the one to the other; but far more abundantly and decisively, it must be confessed, in the adaptation of external nature to the physical, than in its adaptation to the moral and intellectual constitution of man. For fully developing our peculiar argument, an enlargement of the meaning commonly affixed to external nature seems indispensable,—an enlargement that we should not have ventured on, if in so doing we crossed the legitimate boundaries of our assigned subject; and that, for the mere purpose of multiplying our topics, or possessing ourselves of a wider field of authorship But the truth is, that did we confine our notice to the relations which obtain between the world of mind and the world of matter, we should be doing injustice to our own theme, by spoiling it of greatly more than half its richness,—beside leaving unoccupied certain fertile tracts of evidence, which, if not entered upon in our division of the general work, must, as is obvious from the nature of the respective tasks, be altogether omitted in the conjunct demonstration that is now being offered to the public, of the Goodness and Wisdom of the Deity.