THE LIVING WORLD. 165 



material there is none ; nothing but dead and passive 

 laws bearing incredible fruits ; apparently effecting 

 in their blind working results which express to us 

 not only life, but love ! 



But these very laws themselves, sublime in their 

 simplicity, carry their own claim to be held spiritual : 

 they speak distinctly to our hearts of that which 

 is not physical, but is kindred to the soul. For 

 in thinking of this law of least resistance to which 

 we have seen reason to believe organic forms are 

 to be referred, how could I help perceiving such 

 things as these? First, that, rightly speaking, it 

 is hardly to be called a law at all: it is simply 

 the nature and necessity of things. Motion, as we 

 have seen, can take no direction but that of least 

 resistance : regarding the proposition in its most 

 general form, it is less a " law " of motion than 

 its nature. And, therefore, in the very constitution 

 of the world, we perceive with an awful wonder 

 that there are involved all the results of form and 

 structure that are realized in living things. It is 

 the exhibition to us of a fact to which, by its very 

 nature, these results belon g. 



