The whole character and fortune of the individual are affected by the
least inequalities in the culture of the understanding; for example, in
the perception of differences. Therefore is Space, and therefore
Time, that man may know that things are not huddled and lumped,
but sundered and individual. A bell and a plough have each their use,
and neither can do the office of the other. Water is good to drink,
coal to burn, wool to wear; but wool cannot be drunk, nor water
spun, nor coal eaten. The wise man shows his wisdom in separation,
in gradation, and his scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as
nature. The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every
man is as every other man. What is not good they call the worst, and
what is not hateful, they call the best.
In like manner, what good heed, nature forms in us! She pardons no
mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.
The first steps in Agriculture, Astronomy, Zooelogy, (those first steps
which the farmer, the hunter, and the sailor take,) teach that nature's
dice are always loaded; that in her heaps and rubbish are concealed
sure and useful results.
How calmly and genially the mind apprehends one after another the
laws of physics! What noble emotions dilate the mortal as he enters
into the counsels of the creation, and feels by knowledge the
privilege to BE! His insight refines him. The beauty of nature shines
in his own breast. Man is greater that he can see this, and the
universe less, because Time and Space relations vanish as laws are
known.
Here again we are impressed and even daunted by the immense
Universe to be explored. "What we know, is a point to what we do
not know." Open any recent journal of science, and weigh the
problems suggested concerning Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism,
Physiology, Geology, and judge whether the interest of natural
science is likely to be soon exhausted.
Passing by many particulars of the discipline of nature, we must not
omit to specify two.
The exercise of the Will or the lesson of power is taught in every
event. From the child's successive possession of his several senses
up to the hour when he saith, "Thy will be done!" he is learning the
secret, that he can reduce under his will, not only particular events,
but great classes, nay the whole series of events, and so conform all
facts to his character. Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is made to
serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on
which the Saviour rode. It offers all its kingdoms to man as the raw
material which he may mould into what is useful. Man is never
weary of working it up. He forges the subtile and delicate air into
wise and melodious words, and gives them wing as angels of
persuasion and command. One after another, his victorious thought
comes up with and reduces all things, until the world becomes, at
last, only a realized will,--the double of the man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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