203 LIFE IN NATURE. 



but the very truth. It is this makes the good evil 

 to us, and the very image of love to be a bondage 

 and a snare ; makes us cry out on death, where only 

 life is to be found. We see how evil it would 

 be for us to feel the visual appearances of things 

 as if they were the reality, and to be acting so. 

 They would lead us into error, failure, sore per- 

 plexity; we should cry out to be delivered from 

 them, from a source of evil so pressing and so 

 constant! And yet how right and good it is that 

 these visual appearances should be. How well it is 

 for us to perceive them, knowing and feeling them to 

 be what they are ; to see them, and yet not act, 

 nor find it possible to act, according to them. 



It is thus with Nature too. Perfect our being, 

 and make us know it as it is, and it is no more 

 evil, nor the source of evil to us : it could no more 

 tempt or deceive ; felt as appearing only, the appear- 

 ance loses its perverting power ; no more should we 

 do, or find it possible to do, the things which now 

 it is so hard for the best of us to avoid. 



And again, seeing the relations which force bears 

 in the organic world, we have a key by which to 



