VIS MEDICATRIX NATURAE 647 



Revere. It was one whose life was far from being all roses 

 who said: 



To make this Earth our hermitage, 

 A cheerful and a changeful page 

 God's bright and intricate device 

 Of days and seasons doth suffice. 



The third voice is Enquire : From the first Nature has 

 been setting Man problems, leading him gradually on from 

 the practical to the more abstract. Lafcadio Hearn tells us 

 that in the house of any old Japanese family, the guest is 

 likely to be shown some of the heirlooms. " A pretty little 

 box, perhaps, will be set before you. Opening it you will 

 see only a beautiful silk bag, closed with a silk running-cord 



decked with tiny tassels You open the bag and 



see within it another bag of a different quality of silk, but 

 very fine. Open that, and lo ! a third, which contains a 

 fourth, which contains a fifth, which contains a sixth, which 

 contains a seventh bag, which contains the strongest, rough- 

 est, hardest vessel of Chinese clay that you ever beheld; yet 

 it is not only curious but precious; it may be more than a 

 thousand years old." Indeed it is more than clay, there is 

 an idea in it. 



Natural Science has to do with a similar process of un- 

 wrapping it opens the beautiful box, it removes one silken 

 envelope after another, trying at the same time to unravel 

 the pattern and count the threads and what is finally 

 revealed is something very old and wonderful the stuff 

 out of which worlds have been spun " a handful of dust 

 which God enchants ". For we must see the scientific Com- 

 mon Denominator in the light of the philosophic Greatest 

 Common Measure. 



Varying the metaphor, one of the foremost investigators, 



