PERCEIVING & PERCEIVED NATURES 129 



tinguishes each kind the same in nature, rank, and 

 force. Every atom of carbon has the brilliant carbon 

 peculiarity or peculiarities. Every atom of oxygen has 

 the oxygen characteristic, of hydrogen the hydrogen 

 distinction, of nitrogen the nitrogen potency. In such 

 part of a single brain organisation as is necessary to 

 conscious perception, the numbers of each element are 

 enormous. And every atom has its part to play. From 

 one and all rays or activities proceed, and these con- 

 centrating in some inexplicable manner, kindle the 

 perceiving nature. Whence then similarities so high 

 and extensive 1 Whence the perfect likenesses of quali- 

 ties so special and in numbers so vast? Whence the 

 measuring, and adjusting, and adapting of the character- 

 istics of four elements, so as to fit into each other, and 

 be gathered from all parts of the complicated and multi- 

 tudinous fibres of the brain, and formed into so sublime 

 a unity ? That potencies so high should be found in a 

 few atoms of each kind is beyond belief. That all are 

 distinguished by them, and in every one of the same 

 element, accurately of the same measure ; and that there 

 are four qualities, or whatever the numbers may be, 

 adjusted to each other, and adapted for uniting and 

 combining, and being organised so as to yield a product 

 so lofty, no language can express the force with which 

 chance is excluded, the absoluteness of the impossibility 

 that anything but a great intelligence could account for 

 the bringing into being of such phenomena. 



That atoms are capable of forming the brain organisa- 

 tion shows them richly endowed, but they are much 

 more so if they be the substratum in which the perceiv- 

 ing nature inheres. They form in the brain compounds 

 the most complex and fibres in millions. The albuminous 

 matter of the fibres is highly unstable, is unstable with 

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