12 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



of natural piety, is it probable, nay is it possible, 

 that they, and they alone, should have no order in 

 their seeming disorder, no unity in their seeming 

 multiplicity, should suffer no explanation by the 

 discovery of some central and sublime law of mutual 

 connection ? 



LIV 



The student of Nature wonders the more and is 

 astonished the less, the more conversant he becomes 

 with her operations ; but of all the perennial miracles 

 she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy 

 of admiration is the development of a plant or of an 

 animal from its embryo. 



Matter and force are the two names of the one 

 artist who fashions the living as well as the lifeless. 



There is not throughout Nature a law of wider 

 application than this, that a body impelled by two 

 forces takes the direction of their resultant. 



Orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of 

 thought. It learns not, neither can it forget. 



Who shall number the patient and earnest seekers 

 after truth, from the days of Galileo until now, 

 whose lives have been embittered and their good 

 name blasted by the mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters ? 



