THE SOUL IN NATURE. 43 



active existence ; but a stone, lying still by the roadside appears the 

 deadest thing, the most immobile and passive existence it is possible 

 to conceive ; and to assign it an active existence seems absurd. Yet 

 that stone is dragged downwards by the force of gravitation ; it 

 presses towards the centre of the earth and meets with the resistance 

 offered it by the stone on which it rests. That second stone is pressed 

 upon by the first, and is also impelled downward by the force of gravi- 

 tation, but is prevented from descending by other stones on which it 

 is superimposed ; while all of these again are in the same condition — 

 driven down by gravitation, yet prevented from descending further 

 by the objects which support them. Again, the second stone, which 

 bears the weight of the first, and the third stone bearing the weight of 

 the second, are each subjected to the pressure of the body above them, 

 and that pressure — comparatively immeasurable though it is — tends to 

 compress the particles of the body pressed upon ; while the elasticity 

 inherent in the particles of the body pressed upon causes them to re- 

 bound, and so prevents them being crushed or altered permanently in 

 shape. It is just such an assemblage of forces — pressure in one 

 direction, resistance in another, general tendency towards a centre 

 and repulsion from the centre by virtue of the accumulation already 

 there — of which the globe consists, and to which it owes its shape, 

 rotation on its axis, and motion round the sun. If then each separ- 

 ate stone by the wayside, plays a part in a system so extensive and so 

 complete, how can its existence — lifeless, motionless, as it seems — be 

 anything than the most active that can be imagined ? 



Again, if we look round on nature, we discover certain forms of 

 existence which we may term permanent ; yet these very permanent 

 forms only exist by virtue of the incessant change which they are 

 undergoing. The-oak tree, which gave Adam its shadow in the 

 happy garden, and the nightingale which hallowed Eve's connubial 

 sleep, are seen again to day ; the oak-tree has the same shaped leaves, 

 the nightingale the same warbling song, though the identical oak and 

 nightingale which we are supposing to have inhabited Eden have 

 both long since perished. We view a waterfall, and make drawings 

 of its shape and measurements of its altitude ; and we consider it the 

 same waterfall ten years afterwards, when we find it occupying the 

 same place and exhibiting the same form as the one represented in our 

 drawing of ten years' old. Yet no one will suppose that after an in- 

 terval often years we see the same water, the same plants, or even the 



