MATTER AND FORCE. 381 



Who dares to name His name, 



Or belief in Him proclaim, 



Veiled in mystery as He is, the All-enfolder? 



Gleams across the mind His light, 



Feels the lifted soul His might, 



Dare it then deny His reign, the All- upholder? 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



MATTER AND FORCE.* 



As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little 

 fire which glows star-like across the dark-growing moor, where the 

 sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost 

 horseshoe is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the whole 

 Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, tha 

 smithy fire was primarily kindled at the Sun; is fed by air that 

 circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar; 

 therein, with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force 

 of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories- of Force 

 brought about; it is a little ganglion, or nervous center, in the 

 great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an uncon- 

 scious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All. . . . Detached, 

 separated! 1 say there is no such separation: nothing hitherto 

 was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only .a withered leaf, 

 works together with all ; is borne forward on the bottomless, 

 shoreless flood of action, and lives through perpetual metamor- 

 phoses. CARLYLE. 



IT is the custom of the professors in the Royal School 

 of Mines in London to give courses of evening lectures 

 every year to workingmen. The lecture-room holds 600 

 people; and tickets to this amount are disposed of as 

 quickly as they can be handed to those who apply for them. 

 So desirous are the workingmen of London to attend these 

 lectures, that the persons who fail to obtain tickets always 

 bear a large proportion to those who succeed. Indeed, if 

 the lecture-room could hold 2,000 instead of 600, I do not 

 doubt that every one of its benches would be occupied on 

 these occasions. It is, moreover, worthy of remark that 

 the lectures are but rarely of a character which could help 

 the workingman in his daily pursuits. The information 

 acquired is hardly ever of a nature which admits of being 

 turned into money. It is, therefore, a pure desire for 



* A Lecture delivered to the workingmen of Dundee, September 

 5, 1867, with additions. 



