That Power which called us into being has endowed 

 us with the desire to grasp thread after thread of 

 knowledge, that we may hold them as clues to guide 

 us through the labyrinths of unrevealed mysteries. We 

 are obeying the dictates of the Soul when we follow 

 their leading. The faculties which distinguish between 

 thinors which are like and those which are unlike 

 make of us classifiers, and we think of the class, rather 

 than of the individuals which compose it. Thus we 

 are enabled to take a general survey of Nature. 



When we speak of the mineral kingdom, the vege- 

 table kingdom, or the animal kingdom, we remember 

 that, in fact, vegetable and animal organisms are not 

 distinctly separable, and that no man knows the con- 

 ditions necessary for the production of either from 

 their chemical components. We are also reminded 

 that the distinctions ])etween animate and inanimate 

 matter cannot ]:>e too strongly insisted upon. 



Protoplasm, formed by the combination of so many 

 atoms of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen, — 

 inanimate gases, — exists in all animate forms, whether 

 these be of the vegetable or of the animal kingdom. 

 Mineral compounds may lie formed with exactly the 

 same chemical constitution. Where does life arise, and 

 whence comes its activity ? The mind goes beyond 

 these compounds to find that activity in the Motions 

 belonQ-inu' to atoms of matter. 



The Atom is understood to be the material represen- 

 tative of Divine Energy, — the Germ of Being, — and 

 to contain, in combination with other atoms, all the 

 possibilities of the whole Life-System. If we adopt the 

 idea that ntoms partake of the eternal energy of the 



