All this is exceedingly true; and it is new in _one_ respect, namely, in the ascertainment that the quantity of solar force necessary to produce motive power is measurable, and, in its sum, unalterable. For the rest, it was perfectly well known in Homer's time, as now, that animals could not move till they were warm; and the fact that the warmth which enables them to do so is finally traceable to the sun, would have appeared to a Greek physiologist, no more interesting than, to a Greek poet, would have been the no less certain fact, that "Tout ce qui se peut dire de beau est dans les dictionnaires; il n'y a que les mots qui sont transposés"--Everything fine, that can be said, is in the dictionaries; it is only that the words are transposed. Yes, indeed; but to the ποιητής the gist of the matter is _in_ the transposition. The sun does, as the delighted physicist tells you, unquestionably "slide in the snake;" but how comes he to adopt that manner, we artists ask, of (literally) transposition? 101. The summer before last, as I was walking in the woods near the Giesbach, on the Lake of Brientz, and moving very quietly, I came suddenly on a small steel-gray serpent, lying in the middle of the path; and it was greatly surprised to see me. Serpents, however, always have complete command of their feelings, and it looked at me for a quarter of a minute without the slightest change of posture: then, with an almost imperceptible motion, it began to withdraw itself beneath a cluster of leaves. Without in the least hastening its action, it gradually concealed the whole of its body. I was about to raise one of the leaves, when I saw what I thought was the glance of another serpent, in the thicket at the path side; but it was the same one, which having once withdrawn itself from observation beneath the leaves, used its utmost agility to spring into the wood; and with so instantaneous a flash of motion, that I never saw it leave the covert, and only caught the gleam of light as it glided away into the copse. 102. Now, it was to me a matter of supreme indifference whether the force which the creature used in this action was derived from the sun, the moon, or the gas-works at Berne. What was, indeed, a matter of interest to me, was just that which would have struck a peasant, or a child;--namely, the calculating wisdom of the creature's device; and the exquisite grace, strength, and precision of the action by which it was accomplished. 103. I was interested then, I say, more in the device of the creature, than in its source of motion. Nevertheless, I am pleased to hear, from men of science, how necessarily that motion proceeds from the sun. But where did its _device_ come from? There is no wisdom, no device in the dust, any more than there is warmth in the dust. The springing of the serpent is from the sun:--the wisdom of the serpent,--whence that?