54 PHYSICAL SCIENCE 



III 



1 THE universe embraces all the objects that fall, or 

 that can fall, under our cognisance. Of these some 

 are its parts, the remaining ones must form its 

 material. Nature, just like every manual art every- 



2 where, requires material. Let me make this a little 

 plainer. In ourselves the parts are hand, bones, 

 sinews, eyes ; the material is the sap of the digested 

 food, which will be distributed for the nourishment 

 of the parts. Again, blood is in a certain sense a 

 part of us, but still it is material as well. For it 

 goes to form other parts, and, none the less, it is 

 among the parts that go to make up the whole 

 body. 



IV 



1 So the atmosphere is a part, a most necessary one, 

 of the world. This it is that joins heaven and 

 earth, separating highest and lowest in such a way 

 as yet to unite them. It separates by coming in 

 between, it unites by rendering possible communica- 

 tion between the two. It transmits to the higher 

 regions what it receives from the earth ; and again, 

 it transfuses terrestrial objects with the influences 

 of the heavenly bodies. I call it a part of the 

 world in the same sense as animals and trees are 



2 parts. The whole class of animals and trees 

 forms part of the universe, since it has to be taken 

 in to make up the whole, and without it the universe 

 is not complete. A single animal or tree is a quasi- 

 part : though it is lost, that from which it is lost is 

 still entire. Now the atmosphere, as I have 



