144 THE CREATION OF MATTER 



ceived and perceiving natures, the vastness of the capacity 

 of the latter to receive the vastness of the multitudes of 

 motions coming to it from the former, bears overmaster- 

 ing testimony to the all-transcending glory of the under- 

 standing that made and adapted them for each other. 



8. But there is not merely one perceiving nature. 

 There are trillions of them, of a great number of genera 

 and species, and all possessing powers of the same kind, 

 and in the higher animals very much within the same 

 limited range. They are attached to material forms, and 

 use similar material organs. If they be developments 

 of matter, they make manifest, as we have seen, the riches 

 of order and potency stored in the primal elements which 

 have yielded them. If they be elements of a higher 

 nature, as seems irresistibly evinced by scientific considera- 

 tions arising from their action being separated, toto ccelo, 

 from all known forms of molecular and ether activities, 

 many questions arise as to whence they come, where they 

 lie, how they become attached to material frames, ques- 

 tions some of which cannot be answered. That, however, 

 with which alone we are concerned is the field here pre- 

 sented to us of correspondences surpassingly perfect, 

 correspondences many as the molecules of matter and the 

 ether vibrations, correspondences of the most remarkable 

 nature, between perceptive powers and objects perceived, 

 forming an overwhelming argument for their being made 

 and adapted to each other. 



9. The motions involved are to be considered. Those 

 of light are carried by an ether in which the illuminating 

 vibrations range from under four hundred billions per 

 second to nearly eight hundred billions. As far as the 

 perceiving nature is concerned, no ether might have 

 existed at all ; or, if existing, it might have had such 

 properties that its vibrations might have all been in 



