Nature s Intelligence loi 



kind of his work, in all the departments of exist- 

 ence. Take the simple idea of the vertebra in the 

 construction of animals. It was brought in at an 

 appropriate stage of the development of life, and 

 thereafter employed in every one of the infinite 

 varieties of the higher forms. In physics it is now 

 believed by all the authorities that every kind of 

 energy is the manifestation of but a single and 

 simple force, which is transformed by the exigen- 

 cies of its work into heat, light, electricity, chemical 

 affinity, adhesion, gravitation, motion, and what- 

 ever other manifestations there may be. Back of 

 this is a very simple law or motive, which the old 

 Greeks gave, and I am not sure mistakenly, a men- 

 tal and moral character when they said that "Nature 

 abhors a vacuum. ' ' This motive is a determination 

 to compel all forces into equilibrium. That is a 

 very simple idea, and yet how sublime in its magni- 

 tude, omnipotent in its effects, and omnipresent in 

 its operations! It rules with equal energy all spirit- 

 ual existences, from the lowest up to the Creator 

 himself. It drives the sun's rays out into space, 

 lashes the storms forward in their headlong career, 

 causes the rivers to flow, toils at leveling the mount- 

 ains. It projected The Interior out upon the literary 

 and religious world. The editor and his contribu- 

 tors, having evolved ideas in their minds, were irre- 

 sistibly impelled to supply the vacuity in other 

 minds with those ideas, and to exchange them for 

 other people's ideas, and thus equalize the general 



