As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I 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 horseshoe is it a detached, sepa- 

 rated speck, cut off from the whole Universe ; or mdissolubly joined to the whole? 

 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 Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, 

 an unconscious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All ... Detached, sepa- 

 rated! I say there is no such separation: nothing hitherto was ever stranded, 

 east 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. OABLYLE 



V 



MATTER AND FORCE * 



IT is the custom of the Professors in the Royal School 

 of Mines in London to give courses of evening lect- 

 ures 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 600, I do not doubt that every 

 one of its benches would be occupied on these occasions. 



1 A Lecture delivered to the working men of Dundee, September 6, 1867 f 

 with additions. 



(58) 



