for the purpose of ascending to the general fact and principle: analysis decomposes the elements of the general fact, in order to descend to the particular facts. "To generalize and to particularize," says a philosopher "are two alternate actions necessary to moral and intellectual life."*

Division and re-union, skilfully combined, can alone enable the hand or the mind of man to produce in the end works whose beauty and durability seem to stamp upon them the character of creations of a divine hand or intelligence. Look at the Iliad, in which all the individual beauties are so moulded together by the genius of Homer, as to compose a magnificent whole. Look at the master-pieces of the drama, where the variety of characters and events developed in them harmonizes with the unity of interest and action_required in tragedy, as in the epic poem and in all the productions of the arts. Observe, lastly, the continued and regular action of nature in the details and in the totality of her operations for the preservation of the universe.

He who merely knows how to divide loses himself in the details, and has no general views; whilst he whose sole study is to re-unite finds

* See the eighth law, the Law of Action and Re-action.

nothing but masses, and is ignorant of the constituent principles of the bodies or things which he ought to employ. A due mean in all things is therefore necessary, and this truth accordingly forms the subject of a general law. A judicious combination, a happy mixture of these two actions of dividing and re-uniting, produce the same result as the difference and association of the two sexes, which approach each other, and unite for the purpose of creating. It is impossible to produce a new being in the physical, moral, intellectual, social, and political world, but by the judicious application of the two principles of division and union. Discordia concors: herein consists the germ of life, the soul of the world.

The division of labour, of men, of sciences, of social professions, of states or bodies politic, &c. a luminous and productive principle, a law of general application, and their assemblage, their combination, their fusion, the necessary consequence of the exchanges which result from the division, and which become in their turn an active and fertile cause, especially in the organization of societies, and in all that comes within the sphere of political economy, are found operating with the same power in all the physical and mathematical sciences. Mechanics and hydraulics employ suc

cessively springs and wheels, more or less simple or complicated, to produce an action; and first divide their means for the purpose of afterwards combining them, and making them concur to one common end. Military tactics, which Guibert, animated with the warmest enthusiasm for his art, styles the stupendous and super-human science of working an army, of giving battle, of forming and directing the plan of a campaign, by turns divides an army into several parts and unites it again into a single body, simplifies its marches, combines the movements of different corps, expands or draws them close together, manages one hundred thousand men as easily as ten thousand, and thus substitutes method for routine, and combinations for chance. Geometry, physics, optics, mineralogy, chemistry, which alternately divides or decomposes and re-unites the elements and particles of bodies; botany, which studies the individuals of the great family of vegetables, for the purpose of classing them in species and genera, according to their different individual and common qualities, observed separately and compared with each other; architecture, whose different orders depend on particular modes of dividing and re-uniting; painting and sculpture, which cannot combine in a single figure the beautiful forms of individual

parts, which it selects from various models, unless by blending them into a homogeneous whole; music, which produces from a series of modulations a whole of exquisite beauty, each modulation which precedes calling forth that which follows, so that their variety is thus reduced to unity; the mechanical, as well as the fine arts; the moral and political sciences; legislation and jurisprudence, which take up one by one the faculties and actions of men, to form the general code of their rights and duties; literature, rhetoric, poetry, which combine and vary the different elements of language according to special rules peculiar to each; lastly, writing, arithmetic, and printing, which, by the combination of certain characters, formed separately and joined together, embody human thought and its most abstract and sublime conceptions, and communicate to them, in some measure, a physical and material existence more durable than that of man himself: all these arts, all these sciences, cannot obtain results in their respective spheres unless by the judicious application of this law.

The organization and arrangement of a vast administration, a great army, a magnificent edifice, a superb library, a museum, as well calculated for the instruction of artists and the advancement

of the arts, as was the beautiful gallery of Florence, of a fine performance of any kind, a poem, a picture, a concert, or even a ball or an entertainment, consist solely in the two-fold merit of the details and of the whole together, in division and re-union, properly combined and properly applied.

These two creating causes require to be employed by skilful hands capable of turning them to advantage.

SIXTH GENERAL LAW.

LAW OF EXCHANGES, OR OF ASSOCIATION AND
CONCURRENCE.

Exchanges are a necessary Principle of Creation, and
there is nothing but Exchange between Men
and all other Beings.

Exchanges result from division, the equally general influence of which seemed to entitle it to form the subject of a distinct and separate law. In the social order, as in the moral and intellectual world, and in all the sciences, they are an essential and necessary medium of reproduction.

Concurrence, or the result of exchanges, is a principle of strength. Natural philosophy, chemistry, botany, agriculture, medicine, morals,