NATURE AND HER HARMONIES. 
41 
his necessities gradually taught him the qualities of the mag- 
netic needle, and by the aid of this, he can do what the bird or 
fish accomplish directly, by their superior sense. Here, then, 
we have man, so far^ a mere form of animal life, — more per- 
fect, indeed, than any other — ^but sustained by the same law 
which sustains them, and, like them, ceasing to be, when his 
organization is dissolved. For we have said, the office of 
reason, like that of caution and love of life, is to protect this 
existence, and carry it up to the consummation of its creative 
intention ; to lead on the vital forces in the battle against 
decay. And when, in that unceasing war, decay has con- 
quered, reason must die. Its mission has been fulfilled — for 
all the objects, purposes, and duties of simple animal life in 
a material universe, it were sufficient — the animal needs it 
no further. It has been resolved into the original elements, 
and the principle of life returns, to become again a part of 
the spirit of Nature. 
That reason carried man up to the highest point of phys- 
ical perfection his organization was capable of attaining, 
there can be little doubt, — "and all the days of Methu- 
selah were nine hundred and sixty and nine years, and he 
died" — is a sufficient comment upon this point. 
But we said "man was a complex being, the animal a 
simple one." We have thus far presented him as a mere form 
of animal life, and shown the disposal of all that portion of 
his being we hold in common with it ! We have tarried 
long enough amidst the "flesh pots!" Joy in Heaven and 
Thanksgiving on Earth! The murky gloom of terrestrial 
materialism has been pierced and flooded by the keen joy- 
ance of a celestial light ! Moses, the first Poet — the prime- 
val "King of Mind," has sung of how "The Lord God 
formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his 
nostrils the breath df life — and man hecame a living soul P 
He tells how " God made the beast of the field after his kind, 
and cattle after their kind, and every living thing that creepeth 
on the earth after its kind," but he does not sing that He 
