644 NOTHING SMALL IN NATURE. 
tions mentioned in the last few paragraphs, therefore, do act 
in the ways ascribed to them, though our limited faculties are 
at present, perhaps forever, incapable of weighing their imme- 
diate, still more their ultimate consequences. But our inability 
to assign definite values to these causes of the disturbance of 
natural arrangements is not a reason for ignoring the existence 
of such causes in any general view of the relations between 
man and nature, and we are never justified in assuming a force 
to be insignificant because its measure is unknown, or even 
because no physical effect can now be traced to it as its origin. 
The collection of phenomena must precede the analysis of 
them, and every new fact, illustrative of the action and reac- 
tion between humanity and the material world around it, is 
another step towards the determination of the great question, 
whether man is of material nature or above her. 
wish and purpose and thought conceived by mortal man, from the birth of 
our first parent to the final extinction of our race; so that the physical 
traces of our most secret sins shall last until time shall be merged in that 
eternity of which not science, but religion alone. assumes to take cogni- 
zance, 
