304 THE HUMAN FORM. 



otherwise man is a child in a despotic father's house, who never 

 knows the wisdom or rationale of the father's actions : the actions 

 go on with blind strokes like toothed wheels in a factory; and the 

 only lesson is, to keep out of the way of this ponderous and remorse- 

 less nature. On the other hand, instruction, such as heart can love, 

 and memory remember, arises in proportion as we see that the ex- 

 ternal world is nothing but humane ordinances, and that suns are 

 central, systems revolve, plants grow and fire burns, in the interest, 

 and as the vehicles, of a Divine Mind, which is the archetype of our 

 own. To explore God's purposes is the first thought of man ; and 

 to find why God acts in such ways, shapes and properties, is equiva- 

 lent to finding the wisdom of the world. The laws and formulas 

 of things are but new spelling books of this deeper and earlier con- 

 sideration. 



But in the second place, where science succeeds, it is because it 

 cannot throw away its heirlooms — its instincts of the humanity of 

 nature — but applies them to the enucleation of natural truth. For 

 law, rule, phenomena, order and succession, are cerebral humanities, 

 which we get from things and give to things, because we have brains. 

 Where would law be in our conceptions, if no legislator or lawyer 

 had existed among mankind? Where would phenomena be found, 

 if there were no eyes ? Where is our order, when the mind is deli- 

 rious or in disorder ? And where succession, unless time be ticking 

 in ourselves? These dim ideas as much imply humanity as the 

 most carnal Sagas of the mythologies. We equally palm ourselves 

 upon things in averring that they obey law, as when we imagine, in 

 prattling childhood, that the flowers hold speeeh with each other, or 

 that falling waters are moulded into veils and scarfs by the limbs of 

 the Naiads. A Franklin, bottling electricity with the knowing air 

 of a butler, and " calculating" how many dozen the skyey tun will 

 run, is as little emancipated from mannerisms as the poor Norseman 

 of fifteen centuries back, who hears Thor hammering in the thunder- 

 clap, and sees the brightness of the vengeance of the same God when 

 lightning stripes the night with terror. The axioms of Euclid are 

 as incurably human as the fairies and elves. So the difference be- 

 tween modern science and old Myth is not that the one is disem- 

 bodied and absolute, and the other fettered to the flesh; but that in 



