Chapter 11

A PHILOSOPHY THAT IS BOTTOMED ON SOMETHING SUBSTANTIAL--SOME REASONS
PLAINLY PRESENTED, AND CAVILLING OBJECTIONS PUT TO FLIGHT BY A
CHARGE OF LOGICAL BAYONETS.

Dr. Reasono was quite as reasonable, in the personal embellishments
of his lyceum, as any public lecturer I remember to have seen, who
was required to execute his functions in the presence of ladies. If
I say that his coat had been brushed, his tail newly curled, and
that his air was a little more than usually "solemnized," as Captain
Poke described it in a decent whisper, I believe all will be said
that is either necessary or true. He placed himself behind a foot-
stool, which served as a table, smoothed its covering a little with
his paws, and at once proceeded to business. It may be well to add
that he lectured without notes, and, as the subject did not
immediately call for experiments, without any apparatus.

Waving his tail towards the different parts of the room in which his
audience were seated, the philosopher commenced.

"As the present occasion, my hearers," he said, "is one of those
accidental calls upon science, to which all belonging to the
academies are liable, and does not demand more than the heads of our
thesis to be explained, I shall not dig into the roots of the
subject, but limit myself to such general remarks as may serve to
furnish the outlines of our philosophy, natural, moral, and
political--"

"How, sir," I cried, "have you a political as well as a moral
philosophy?"

"Beyond a question; and a very useful philosophy it is. No interests
require more philosophy than those connected with politics. To
resume--our philosophy, natural, moral and political, reserving most
of the propositions, demonstrations, and corollaries, for greater
leisure, and a more advanced state of information in the class.
Prescribing to myself these salutary limits, therefore, I shall
begin only with nature.

"Nature is a term that we use to express the pervading and governing
principle of created things. It is known both as a generic and a
specific term, signifying in the former character the elements and
combinations of omnipotence, as applied to matter in general, and in
the latter its particular subdivisions, in connection with matter in
its infinite varieties. It is moreover subdivided into its physical
and moral attributes, which admit also of the two grand distinctions
just named. Thus, when we say nature, in the abstract, meaning
physically, we should be understood as alluding to those general,
uniform, absolute, consistent, and beautiful laws, which control and
render harmonious, as a great whole, the entire action, affinities,
and destinies of