HYPOTHESES OF THE WORLD. 311 



to a certain extent. The vegetable, on the other hand, bears no 

 resemblance to the whole man, nor does it act at all; it likens to us 

 in being of use ; and whether it be as fruit and flavor to our bodies, 

 or as beauty and symbolism to our minds and souls, this same law 

 holds : the law, namely, not of progression to man, but of use en- 

 tering into progression. This use is the making up of substances 

 into new forms to serve us. Support, however, is the human pro- 

 perty of the mineral kingdom, and in all cases terra jlrma is its 

 kindness to us. It stands under all things, and bears their burdens; 

 and in all things it still stands under them, and makes them real. 

 For it not only supports the stems of trees, and the feet of animals 

 and men, but it supports the vegetative process in the one case, and 

 the animal life in the other ; so that without it the trees would be 

 but plans of trees, and the animals but illusions. Its gold, unlike 

 paper, is the earth of credit, by which solidity enters into commerce. 

 Its salts are the earth of the blood, without which that soulful or- 

 ganism would be footless, or without a base. Its rocks are the 

 surety of foundations for houses, otherwise than sand and mould. 

 Its jewels are stern flowers that shine in spite of the seasons. Its 

 stones make our palaces and prisons, which are the ultimo ratio of 

 our arts and laws. It also supports the soul as well as the body, 

 and give our ideas a terrene base, of resistance, hardness, perma- 

 nence, steadiness, and much else which is low, moral and strong, so 

 that to the soul the very ground is terra firma to justice and virtue. 

 Nothing of this could be, unless the earth were coordinate with 

 man, that is to say, in its own remoteness, humane. 



The three kingdoms have also succeeded each other as the organa 

 of so many hypotheses of the world ; thereby attesting that they 

 themselves belong to an afliliated scale. Thus we have the idea that 

 the world is an animal ; a conception attributed to Plato, but not, 

 so far as we know, carried out in detail. A second idea of the 

 world is spiral or vegetable, and works the hypothesis of develop- 

 ment instinctively through all things : according to this conception 

 worlds grow : it has been a favorite notion with races who have 

 lost their revelations, and was set forth in that Scandinavian myth 

 of the Ash Yggdrasil, which ash was in fact the universe : it sprang 

 out of depths which no God or man knew ; beside its root was the 



