238 Form and Color in Nature. 



matter alone with which we are familiar the forms are prac- 

 tically infinite. These may be divided primarily into crys- 

 talline and non-crystalline. The great body of matter, as 

 we know it, comes within the non-crystalline class, and 

 much of it might be called amorphous. 



Thus we have the inorganic world, characterized by form 

 and color in infinite variety, and governed by laws a part 

 of which we know and of much of which we are ignorant. 

 Still trying to view our subject systematically, and looking 

 back into the dim past as far as we can safely speculate, we 

 may imagine a nebulous body of diffused matter, inspired 

 by, led by, animated or endowed with, certain tendencies. I 

 care not what expression you use ; I simply care about the 

 thought : of substance, or that which for the sake of conven- 

 ience we may call substance, characterized by certain tend- 

 encies the various attractive forces, the chemical forces, 

 the vital forces, call them one, call them many they are all 

 one to me ; for at the earliest point at which my mind can 

 have relation to the universe I must assume it to be already 

 possessed of the promise and the potency of all that is to 

 come of it. I do not say that I can understand this ; I do 

 not say that it makes speculation easy. As I have stated 

 here before, I can not go back in my thought to a time 

 where I do not touch upon that which to my mind is im- 

 possible and inconceivable ; nor do I believe that any one 

 else is better off than I. 



I am informed that there are those who do understand 

 all these things, and who could have given points had 

 they been called upon for their advice at the proper time. 

 The pity of it is that this appears not to have been thought 

 of, and we are left to mourn our fate as denizens of an im- 

 perfect and faulty universe. In the evolution of language 

 certain popular phrases, one after another, appear and dis- 

 appear, having while they are current a certain expressive- 

 ness, tickling, as they do, our jaded fancies. If I might bor- 

 row one of these of recent origin, I should say that " I have 

 no use " for the pretended evolutionist, who, standing upon 

 this globe and conscious of the whirling, living universe of 

 which he is a part, feels no sense of an awful power, infinite 

 and incomprehensible, which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, 

 and the nature and attributes of which it hath not entered 

 into the heart of man to conceive. At the only beginning 

 of which I can think, the universe was throbbing with this 

 power. I imagine the nebulous body of which I have spoken 



