HOMOLOGIES. 221 
the ingenuity, the invention, the skill, if I may so 
speak, shown in varying this single pattern of ani- 
mal life. When one has become, by long study 
of Nature, in some sense intimate with the animal 
creation, it is impossible not, to recognize in it the 
immediate action of thought, and even to special- 
ize the intellectual faculties it reveals. It speaks 
of an infinite power of combination and analysis, 
of reminiscence and prophecy, of that which has 
been, in eternal harmony with that which is to be; 
and while we stand in reverence before the grand- 
eur of the Creative Conception as a whole, there 
breaks from it such lightness of fancy, such rich- 
ness of invention, such variety and vividness of 
color, nay, even the ripple of mirthfulness, — for 
Nature has its humorous side also, —that we 
lose our grasp of its completeness in wonder at its 
details, and our sense of its unity is clouded by 
-its marvellous fertility. There may seem to be 
an irreverence in thus characterizing the Crea- 
tive Thought by epithets which we derive from 
the exercise of our own mental faculties; but it 
is nevertheless true, that, the nearer we come to 
Nature, the more does it seem to us that all our 
intellectual endowments are merely the echo of 
the Almighty Mind, and that the eternal arche- 
types of all manifestations of thought in man 
are found in the Creation of which he is the 
crowning work. 
