TBE SOUL IN NATURE. 45 



What is the cloud but an assemblage of •vrater-drops, atmospheric air, 

 electricity, and ammonia ? That same water, air, electricity, and am- 

 monia, fall in a shower, and are each absorbed by the plant ; and, to- 

 mon'ow, the very same elements, which appeared in the heavens like 

 a golden car for the sun, or a group of cherubim winging upward 

 through the ether, are seen in the form of a lowly violet, the ele- 

 ments that formed the cloud lend softness to its purple tint, freshness 

 to its grateful odour, and healthy greenness to its heart-shaped leaves ; 

 how then could the cloud which yesterday floated in the blue heaven, 

 and to day forms the tissues of a plant, be said to have any existence 

 but as a letter in an alphabet which Nature is everlastingly weaving 

 into prose syllables or poetic rhymes ? 



Eut there is a higher fact revealed in this philosophy, namely, that 

 the laws which we perceive working as instruments of power are the 

 laws of reason, and are as truly in harmony with the human mind as 

 with that higher mind from which all things spring. So true is it, 

 that naturalists have frequently deduced natural laws from reason 

 alone, and have afterwards discovered them really existing in nature. 

 From the fact that bodies mutually attract each other, Newton de- 

 duced, that as the distances of bodies increase, their mutual attraction 

 decreases ; and that an effect proceeding from one point becomes 

 weaker in proportion as the square of distances increases. Both these 

 conclusions have been verified by appeals to nature, and the true laws 

 of planetary motions have thus been traced out as fruits of human 

 reason resting on its own strength alone, and asserting that such and 

 such must be, because such and such already exists. Kepler's great 

 laws of the motions of the heavenly bodies were discovered in this 

 way ; and it is well known that Leverrier measm-ed the weight, 

 velocity, distance, and constitution of the planet Neptune without 

 having seen it, and so determined its existence by the aid of reason 

 alone. 



Bj^ the very fact that man is a part of nature, so his reason is also 

 natural, or in harmony with the reason manifested in natural law. 

 Were the laws of nature antagonistic to the infinite reason, they 

 could not exist; were they inconsistent with human reason, man 

 could not comprehend them ; — ^hence we know that in the great unity 

 of the spiritual and material, man is also concerned, and inseparably 

 united in the living idea of the Almighty power by whom all things 

 are created. From the moment that we perceive this truth, the 



