the form of objects in the vegetable kingdom, and some have taken the form of objects in the animal kingdom. The determinations of thought, of which inorganic things, trees, and animals were the expressions, are all eternal. It is of the nature of the things in which the determinations of thought took form to change and pass away. But the ideal patterns, of which they were only the temporary forms, are held in the mind of God forever. The house which expresses the architect’s ideal may be blown away, or burned up, but the ideal in the thought of the architect cannot be blown away or burned up. Now in man the determination of God’s thought is not expressed in a thing, but in a thought. Man, as God’s child, inherits, or comes through creation into the possession of thought, of mind, so that he is able to set up thinking—in his own behalf, and by the self-determining, self-conscious, and self-active power of his own mind. God as thought is his own object and his own subject, and man as thought is his own object and his own subject. God has set him up to housekeeping in the republic of thought. In the changes which take place in material objects, there is preservation of the species, but the loss of the individual. The object is an element and not a self. When it changes, it is by something external to itself, and in changing, realizes its nature. It is indifferent to change, as there is no central self that retains its essential identity in the midst of all change. The tree belongs to a higher order of existence than a rock. It is the expression of unconscious life. The animal belongs to a still higher plane than the tree. Besides appropriating food from its environment, as does the tree, it takes in the images of things, and lives a low order of sentient life. But in order that animals may take in the images of things through the senses, the things must be present before them. When the thing is gone, the image fades. The objects which stand around man in his environment pass into his consciousness through the senses. But when the environment changes and the objects are taken away, the impressions made by the objects remain. In this way man re-creates the universe for his own thought. The gurgling of brooks, the murmur of the sea, the sighing of the winds, the cooing of doves, he hears just as the animal does. But away from brooks, and seas, and winds, and doves, Beethoven throws into one of his symphonies all the notes that were ever on sea or land. He has within him the same kind of mind that expressed itself in all the notes of music, and he not only hears these notes, but he re-combines and reorganizes them in his great compositions. IV.