INTRODUCTION. 



the mere relations of physical objects or material 

 forces ; but that she has a message for us, not less 

 from heaven because conveyed through earthly 

 instruments, respecting our inmost nature and our 

 highest relations. Science, in a word, can teach 

 us it is her loftiest function and her greatest boon 

 not only respecting nature, but respecting ourselves, 

 and so can enable us to look with purged eyes on 

 objects which only to our blinded senses can seem 

 trivial. We lose our privilege, we fall short of our 

 duty, if we do not seek to gather these fruits wherever 

 they are presented to our hand. 



In perusing these pages, the reader, especially if 

 unaccustomed to similar studies, will possibly expe- 

 rience more or less of a feeling as if he were losing 

 hold of something that he could not afford to part 

 with. He may feel that there is a tendency in them 

 to materialize that which he cannot but regard as 

 altogether above matter, and to reduce to the level 

 of mechanism that which owes its chief beauty to its 

 freedom from mechanical conditions. If so, let him 

 by all means cherish this feeling. He could by no 

 possibility more entirely depart from the spirit of the 



