MEDITATIONS AND CRITICISMS 185 



we see that virtue is to be sought and vice to be 

 shunned ; we see that a good man's life is the fiuit 

 of the same balance and proportion as that which 

 makes the fields green and the corn ripen. It is 

 not by some fortuitous circumstance, the especial 

 favor of some god, but by living in harmony with 

 immutable laws through which the organic world 

 has been evolved, that he is what he is. 



V 

 To say that the world or the order of nature is 

 reasonable is like saying how well the body fits the 

 skin. The order of nature fits our faculties and 

 appears reasonable to us, not because it is shaped to 

 them, but because they are shaped to it, just as the 

 eye is shaped to the light or the ear to the waves of 

 sound. Nature is first and man last. Things are 

 good to us because our constitutions are shaped to 

 them ; no absolute goodness is argued. Fluids might 

 seem like solids to beings differently constituted. 

 Were the laws of the physical world designed to 

 bring about certain results, or do the results simply 

 follow ? Shall we say that the inclination of the 

 earth's axis to the plane of its orbit is in order that 

 there may be a change of season ? or does the change 

 of the season simply follow as an inevitable conse- 

 quence ? Is the air adapted to the lungs or the 

 lungs to the air ? Of course the lesser or secondary 

 fact is always adjusted to the greater or primary fact. 

 The structure of a bird, the mechanism of its wings 

 and feathers, etc., is all adapted with the nicest accu- 



