THE SEASONS. l5l 



material works of God as the incomprehensible 

 Universe exceeds the stretch of the human hand* 

 though we cannot push our analysis any further 

 than observation and rational inference would bear 

 us out; and thus cannot approach either the infi- 

 nitely great or the infinitely small, so near as to 

 have even a conception of them farther than that 

 they can differ from each other as material things 

 differ ; and that any or both are perfectly capable of 

 coexisting with an infinitude of knowledge know- 

 ledge or intelligence, which is one and indivisible in 

 its essence, but of which the manifestations can 

 have no limit, and which cannot be divided in any 

 other way than through its manifestations, either in 

 space or in time. 



There are many places of the world where, if a 

 stranger were to come at certain seasons, he would 

 never imagine that the fields would be clothed with 

 vegetation. A native of the green savannas of 

 America, coming to England in winter, or after the 

 fields were ploughed and the seeds sown and covered, 

 would think it mockery if he were to be told that it 

 was from these black wastes that the people of 

 England reaped their bread. So also if one unac- 

 quainted with the changes of the seasons trod the 

 snows and the mountains when these lay deep and 

 hard so that not even the top of the highest bush 

 appeared, he would regard it as mockery if he were 

 to be asked to come back again in six months to be 

 feasted with delicious berries. And there are other 

 cases much more mysterious to unthinking obser- 

 vers than these. The endless variety of fungi, and 

 lichens, and moulds, and other plants, many of which 

 have their seeds too small for the eye or even the 

 microscope ; and the entire plants of many of the 

 species are too small for the microscope even taken 

 as wholes, are yet always found whenever circum- 

 stances are favourable for their production. The 

 waste of the year, the refuse and rubbish that have 



