Chapter I: Front Matter

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THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE

... μὴ σκοπούντων ἡμῶν τὰ βλεπόμενα, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὴ βλεπόμενα· τὰ
γὰρ βλεπόμενα, πρόσκαιρα· τὰ δὲ μὴ βλεπόμενα, αἰώνια. Πρὸς
Κορινθίους, Βʹ. δʹ.

Animula! vagula, blandula,
Hospes comesque corporis,
Quae nunc abibis in loca,—
Pallidula, rigida, nudula....
HADRIAN.

‘God hath endowed us with different faculties, suitable and
proportional to the different objects that engage them. We
discover sensible things by our senses, rational things by our
reason, things intellectual by understanding; but divine and
celestial things he has reserved for the exercise of our faith,
which is a kind of divine and superior sense in the soul. Our
reason and understanding may at some times snatch a glimpse,
but cannot take a steady and adequate prospect of things so
far above their reach and sphere. Thus, by the help of natural
reason, I may know there is a God, the first cause and original
of all things; but his essence, attributes, and will, are hid
within the veil of inaccessible light, and cannot be discerned
by us but through faith in his divine revelation. He that walks
without this light, walks in darkness, though he may strike out
some faint and glimmering sparkles of his own. And he that, out
of the gross and wooden dictates of his natural reason, carves
out a religion to himself, is but a more refined idolater than
those who worship stocks and stones, hammering an idol out of his
fancy, and adoring the works of his own imagination. For this
reason God is nowhere said to be jealous, but upon the account of
his worship.’—_Pilgrims Progress_, Part III.

‘To die,—to sleep;—
To sleep! perchance to dream;—ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.’—SHAKESPEARE, _Hamlet_, Act iii. Scene 1.

THE

UNSEEN UNIVERSE

OR

PHYSICAL SPECULATIONS

ON A

FUTURE STATE

BY

B. STEWART AND P. G. TAIT.

——the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are
not seen are eternal.

_SEVENTH EDITION_
(_Revised, and Enlarged._)

London
MACMILLAN AND CO
1878.

[_All Rights reserved._]

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written
for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read,
mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience, and
comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast _the
blessed hope of everlasting life_, which thou hast given us in
our Saviour Jesus Christ.—_Amen._

Edinburgh University Press:
T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY.