244 FROM A NEW ENGLAND HILLSIDE. 



XL VII. 



Iv one of my earlier notes I referred to 



those who refuse to interest themselves in 

 the details of the structure and life of plants 

 and other objects about them, and quietly 

 scoffed at their apparent fear lest the mys 

 tery of life should be wholly explained, and 

 nothing be left to wonder at or reverence. 

 And I have just enforced this thought at 

 greater length, and tried to show that at the 

 best we are but as bits of floating down, sur 

 rounded by an unfathomable and incompre 

 hensible immensity. 



Yet for the practical man of affairs, and 

 woman of society whose attention has not 

 been drawn to the larger questions, but 

 who have been alive to the surface changes, 

 there is a certain partial excuse for this 

 attitude of mind in the events of the past 

 century, and especially of the past fifty 

 years. 



The material progress of the world since 

 the close of the American and the French 

 revolutions, the development of invention 



