AESCULAPIUS. 489 



we must not forget that the " past is death's," the present 

 only is our own ; that progress and growth are written on 

 all things; that a flowing river, a seed-filled field, is this 

 time ; that there are no ends or beginnings, but only arres- 

 tations and continuations ; that there is nothing erect or 

 fixed, but only leanings and slidings everywhere no rest 

 even for the rock,* which will be a plant ; the plant, 

 " struggling to become a different and to attain the light," 

 must be an animal, while the animal stirs in its somnambu- 

 lism and dreams, and would fain be a man. Let us accredit 

 this revelation of the growth and development of the uni- 

 verse revealed by science, and, while with sentiments of 

 gratitude and joy we celebrate the achievements of the mind 

 in the past, and glorify its wonderful power, recorded in the 

 written word, or books of the world, " its monuments more 

 enduring than brass," we must not forget that " in all scrip- 

 tures, the letter kills," the spirit alone is alive, growing, 

 reproductive, immortal. With sadness, then, we must also 

 arrive at the conclusion that a painfully servile subjugation 

 of the soul has been achieved ; that the old, with dogmatism 

 and tyranny, has always demanded an agonizing humility 

 and worship, because it is old; that the lessons of the 

 ancient schools, assuming the overwhelming prestige of an- 



* The ordinary apprehension that the rock reposes in eternal still- 

 ness in its geological fastness, is erroneous. (See note at end of 

 chapter ^sculapius, page 534.) One extravagant dreamer, Evan 

 Hopkins, (on connection of geology with terrestrial magnetism and 

 the general polarity of matter,) has made it out clearly (he thinks) 

 that the epidermis, or stone mantle of the globe, is in perpetual 

 motion, creeping north, and turning within itself by a stupen- 

 dous galvanic devouring, and has also fixed the rates of its pro- 

 gression by lines in thousands of years. As the continents and 

 most of the bodies of land visible above the watery envelope of the 

 planet have their heads or larger extremities north and their tails or 

 terminating points south, it comes that the tadpole-theory of develop- 

 ment holds good in the movements of worlds as well as the growth 

 of frogs. Onward toward the north star crawl the continents and 

 islands, and onward to the north is progress and the watchword of 

 development. Advance, Hopkins, with your rhinoceros hide of the 

 world ! 



