104 HOW NATURE STUDY SHOULD BE TAUGHT 



and unless your soul be blind and deaf, you shall 

 learn things never before dreamed of in your 

 philosophy." 



" What did you get?" Castellar tells you : 



" Oh, Nature; immovable in the midst of move- 

 ment, unique amid variety, surrounded with ether 

 which penetrates every pore, forming the spirit 

 and its atmosphere, with the continual succession 

 of organic beings which change and are trans- 

 formed. Oh Nature ! durable and unchangeable ; 

 subject to death and to eternity ; to the limited 

 and the infinite ; diffused over the immensity of 

 space and compressed into organic beings from 

 the stars which irradiate the heavens to the flowers 

 which perfume the air with their aroma ; from the 

 unspeakable gases that evaporate, to the great 

 mountain chains with their glaciers, where the 

 snow whitens the volcanoes struggling with inter- 

 nal fires ; from the almost imperceptible nebulae, 

 the great worlds which travel through space ; 

 from the grain of sand drifted by the wave, to the 

 furthest stars of the Milky Way, whose light 

 reaches us in twenty thousand centuries." 



"What did you get?" Hear John Tyndall's 

 answer : 



" The lilies of the field have a value for us be- 



