CLOUDS AND RIVERS, ICE AND GLACIERS. 125 



of water. There is no fish to be taken care of here, 

 still the ' contrivance ' is the same. 



323. I am reluctant to mention them in the same 

 breath with Count B,uniford, but I am told that in our 

 own day there are people who profess to find the comforts 

 of a religion in a superstition lower than any that has 

 hitherto degraded the civilized human mind. So that 

 the happiness of a faith and the truth of a faith are two 

 totally different things. 



324. Life and the conditions of life are in necessary 

 harmony. This is a truism, for without the suitable 

 conditions life could not exist. But both life and its 

 conditions set forth the operations of inscrutable Power. 

 We know not its origin ; we know not its end. And 

 the presumption, if not the degradation, rests with 

 those who place upon the throne of the universe a 

 magnified image of themselves, and make its doings 

 a mere colossal imitation of their own. 



§ 47. The Molecular Mechanism of Water- congelation. 



325. But let us return to our science. How are we 

 to picture this act of expansion on the part of freezing 

 water ? By what operation do the molecules demand 

 with such irresistible emphasis more room in the solid 

 than in the adjacent liquid condition ? In all cases of 

 this kind we must derive our conceptions from the 

 world of the senses, and transfer them afterwards to a 

 world transcending the range of the senses. 



