1 62 Walks in New England 



know. A word from a lofty thinker may give us 

 pause. Sir Thomas Browne wrote, long ago, 

 such meditations as these : 



&quot; That we are the breath and similitude of God, 

 it is indisputable, and upon record of holy scrip 

 ture ; but to call ourselves a microcosm, or little 

 world, I thought it only a pleasant trope of rhetoric, 

 till my near judgment and second thought told 

 me there was a real truth therein. For first we 

 are a rude mass, and in the rank of creatures which 

 only are, and have a dull kind of being, not yet 

 privileged with life, or preferred to sense or reason ; 

 next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, 

 the life of men, and at last the life of spirits; 

 running on, in one mysterious nature, those five 

 kinds of existences, which comprehend the creatures 

 not only of the world, but of the universe. Thus 

 is man that great and true amphibium, whose 

 nature is disposed to live not only like other crea 

 tures in divers elements, but in divided and dis 

 tinguished worlds ; for though there be but one 

 to sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, 

 the other invisible.&quot; 



