into genial and working temper; the horizon opens, and we are full of
good-will and gratitude to the Cause of Causes. I like the sentiment of
the poor woman who, coming from a wretched garret in an inland
manufacturing town for the first time to the sea-shore, gazing at the
ocean, said "she was glad for once in her life to see something which
there was enough of."
Our Copernican globe is a great factory or shop of power, with its
rotating constellations, times, and tides. The machine is of colossal
size; the diameter of the water-wheel, the arms of the levers, and the
volley of the battery, out of all mechanic measure; and it takes long to
understand its parts and its workings. This pump never sucks; these
screws are never loose; this machine is never out of gear. The vat, the
piston, the wheels and tires, never wear out, but are self-repairing. Is
there any load which water cannot lift? If there be, try steam; or if
not that, try electricity. Is there any exhausting of these means?
Measure by barrels the spending of the brook that runs through your
field. Nothing is great but the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. She
shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep. What spaces!
what durations! dealing with races as merely preparations of somewhat to
follow; or, in humanity, millions of lives of men to collect the first
observations on which our astronomy is built; millions of lives to add
only sentiments and guesses, which at last, gathered in by an ear of
sensibility, make the furniture of the poet. See how children build up a
language; how every traveller, every laborer, every impatient boss, who
sharply shortens the phrase or the word to give his order quicker,
reducing it to the lowest possible terms,--and there it must
stay,--improves the national tongue. What power does Nature not owe to
her duration of amassing infinitesimals into cosmical forces!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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