As I rode through the Schwarzwald, 1 said to myself : That 

 little fire which glows star-like across the dark-growing moor, 

 where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to 

 replace thy lost horse-shoe, is it a detached, separated speck, 

 cut off from the whole Universe ; or indissolubly joined to the 

 whole f Thou fool, that smithy-fire was primarily kindled at the 

 Sun ; is fed by air that circulates from before Noah's Deluge, 

 from beyond the Dogstar; therein, with Iron Force, and Coal 

 Force, and the far stranger Force of Man, are cunning affinities 

 and battles and victories of Force brought about ; it is a little 

 ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of Immen- 

 sity. Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on the 

 bosom of the All .... Detached, separated ! I say there is no 

 such separation : nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside ; 

 but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together with all ; is 

 borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood of action, and 

 lives through perpetual metamorphoses. CAELYLE. 



V. 

 MATTER AND FORCE* 



IT is the custom of the Professors in the Royal School 

 of Mines in London to give courses of evening lec- 

 tures every year to working men. The lecture-room 

 holds 600 people; and tickets to this amount are dis- 

 posed of as quickly as they can be handed to those who 

 apply for them. So desirous are the working men of 

 London to attend these lectures, that the persons who 

 fail to obtain tickets always bear a large proportion to 

 those who succeed. Indeed, if the lecture-room could 

 hold 2,000 instead of GOO, I do not doubt that every 



* A lecture delivered to the working men of Dundee, Septem- 

 ber 5, 1867, with additions. 



53 



