HOMOLOGIES 221 



tlie ingenuity, the invention, the skill, if I may so 

 speak, shown in varying this single pattern of ani- 

 mal life. When one has become, by long study 

 of Nature, in some sense intimate with the animal 

 creation, it is impossible not to recognize in it the 

 immediate action of thought, and even to special- 

 ize the intellectual faculties it reveals. It speaks 

 of an infinite power of combination and analysis, 

 of reminiscence and prophecy, of that which has 

 been, in eternal harmony with that which is to be; 

 and while we stand in reverence before the grand- 

 eur of the Creative Conception as a whole, there 

 breaks from it such lightness of fancy, such rich- 

 ness of invention, such variety and vividness of 

 color, nay, even the ripple of mirthfulness, — foi 

 Nature has its humorous side also, — that we 

 lose our grasp of its completeness in wonder at its 

 details, and our sense of its unity is clouded by 

 its marvellous fertility. Tliere may seem to be 

 an irreverence in thus characterizing the Crea- 

 tive Thought by epithets which we derive from 

 the exercise of our own mental faculties ; but it 

 is nevertheless true, that, the nearer we come to 

 Nature, the more does it seem to us that all our 

 intellectual endowments are merely the echo of 

 the Almighty Mind, and that the eternal arche- 

 types of all manifestations of thought in man 

 are found in the Creation of which he is the 

 crowning work 



