THE NATURAL PROVIDENCE 



away, and the new gods of law and order, who deal 

 justly if mercilessly, take their places. 



"The mind of the universe which we share," is a 

 phrase of Thoreau's — a large and sane idea which 

 shines like a star amid his many firefly conceits and 

 paradoxes. The physical life of each of us is a part or 

 rill of the universal life about us, as surely as every 

 ounce of our strength is a part of gravity. With 

 equal certainty, and under the same law, our men- 

 tal lives flow from the fountain of universal mind, 

 the cosmic intelligence which guides the rootlets of 

 the smallest plant as it searches the soil for the ele- 

 ments it needs, and the most minute insect in avail- 

 ing itself of the things it needs. It is this primal cur- 

 rent of life, the two different phases of which we see 

 in our bodies and in our minds, that continues after 

 our own special embodiments of it have ceased; in 

 it is the real immortality. The universal mind does 

 not die, the universal life does not go out. The jewel 

 that trembles in the dewdrop, the rain that lends 

 itself to the painting of the prismatic colors of the 

 bow in the clouds, pass away, but their fountain- 

 head in the sea does not pass away. The waters may 

 make the wonderful circuit through the clouds, the 

 air, the earth, and the cells and veins of living 

 things, any number of times — now a globule of 

 vapor in the sky, now a starlike crystal in the snow, 

 now the painted mist of a waterfall, then the limpid 

 current of a mountain brook — and still the sea re- 



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