FOOD AND KNOWLEDGE. 219 



smile forth as golden wheat. What we call growth, is it 

 not a perpetual absorption of Nature, the identification of 

 the individual with the universal? And may we not in 

 speculative moods consider Death as the grand impatience of 

 the soul to free itself from the circle of individual activity, — 

 the yearning of the creature to be united with the Creator ? 

 As with Life, so also with Knowledge, which is intel- 

 lectual life. In the early days of man's history, Nature and 

 her marvellous ongoings were regarded with but a casual 

 and careless eye, or else with the merest wonder. It was 

 late before profound and reverent study of her laws could 

 wean men from impatient speculations ; and now, what is 

 our intellectual activity based on, except on the more 

 thorough mental absorption of Nature ? When that absorp- 

 tion is completed, the mystic drama will be siumy clear, 

 and all Nature's processes wiU be visible to man, as a divine 

 Effluence and Life. 



