NATURAL HISTORY 



LECTUEE II. 



NATURAL HISTORY AS RELATED TO TASTE. 



ALL created things are a series of dependencies. 

 They are more than a simple series ; for, if studied 

 in groups, like the stones of an arch, each group is 

 found to have not only its own conditions of exist- 

 ence, but to be conditional for another. This is cer- 

 tainly true of all material forms of organic or inor- 

 ganic combinations. So far-reaching is this idea of 

 relative dependence, that we can not by reasoning 

 reach an absolute in time, space, matter, or force. 

 Go far as we may in either direction, the mind still 

 seeks for a more remote cause, a still lower condi- 

 tion. But by allowing the mind to rest on a single 

 view and to consider a single condition, this view or 

 condition becomes magnified ; and though it can 

 never become to us the absolute, it may assume an 

 undue importance, and seem to us to be the very 

 atlas upon which the world rests. All members of 

 the series are stones in a perfect arch. The stone 



