THE REV. JAMES MARTINEAU. 521 
corresponding objects of thought, and of seeing these in 
their proper relations, without the interior haze and soft 
penumbral borders which the theologian loves. To this 
mode of " interpreting nature, " I shall to the. best of my 
ability now adhere. 
Neither of us, I trust, will be afraid or ashamed to begin 
at the alphabet of this question. Our first effort must be 
to. understand each other, and this 'mutual understanding 
can only be ensured by beginning low down. Physically 
speaking, however, we need not go below the sea-level. 
Let us then travel in company to the Caribbean Sea, and 
halt upon the heated water. What is that sea, and what 
is the sun that heats it? Ajisw^rlng:.fox--myself, I say that 
they are both matter. I fill a glass with the sea- water and 
expose it on the~decTt~bf the vessel; after some time the 
liquid has all disappeared, and left a solid residue of salt 
in the glass behind. We have mobility, invisibility 
apparent annihilation. In virtue of 
The glad and secret aid 
The sun unto the ocean paid, 
the water has taken to itself wings and flown off as vapor. 
From the whole surface of the Caribbean Sea such vapor is 
rising; and now we must follow it not upon our legs, 
however, nor in a ship, nor even in a balloon, but by the 
mind's eye in other words, by that power of Vorstellung 
which Mr. Martineau knows so well, and which he so 
justly scorns when it indulges in loose practices. 
Compounding, then, the northward motion of the vapor 
with the earth's axial rotation, we track our fugitive 
through the higher atmostpheric regions, obliquely across 
the Atlantic Ocean to Western Europe, and on to our 
familiar Alps. .Here another wonderful metamorphosis 
occurs. Floating on the cold cairn air, and in presence of 
the cold firmament, the vapor condenses, not only to 
particles of water, but to particles of crystalline water. 
These coalesce to staus of snow, which fall upon the moun- 
tains in forms so exquisite that, when first seen, they never 
fail to excite rapture. As to beauty, indeed, they put the 
work of the lapidary to shame, while as to accuracy they 
render concrete the abstractions of the geometer. Are these 
crystals "matter?" Without presuming to dogmatize, I 
answer for myself in the affirmative. 
