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by another, and a new chain of cause and effect commenced. 
This, indeed, may be affirmed of every act or movement of 
animal life generally ; the “ uniform course " of Nature being 
altered by every footfall on its surface. 
But man's whole mission upon earth seems to be that ho 
should work miracles. He breaks the “ uniform course " and 
overrules the laws of wild Nature, and turns a howling wilder- 
ness into a fruitful field or smiling garden, and subdues the 
whole animal kingdom to serve his convenience, by the simple 
process of opposing one law of Nature to another, by the 
superior power of his own intelligence and will. 
Neither vegetables nor animals “ know '' anything of the 
laws by which they act or are acted upon ; they fulfil their 
parts by a blind faith in the power implanted in their 
germs and developed by the counteraction of other powers 
ordained for the purpose by the Supreme Intelligence. 
But man is not precluded from knowing the laws and power 
by which he works, although the vast majority of men concern 
themselves to know nothing about it ; and the nations and 
peoples do their Creator's behest, and work the miracles they 
were sent on earth to work, knowing little more of the secret 
springs of their own life and action than the animals around 
them. 
Man has been called a Microcosm, because he unites in 
himself something of the essences of all the kingdoms of 
Nature, sidereal, as well as earthly. And it is manifest that 
this must be so ; for, since he is capable of receiving the influ- 
ences of the sun and the skies, of the atmosphere and the 
earth, and of the animal and vegetable world living and 
moving in them, there must necessarily be something in him 
of the nature of all these things ; and the power which we 
see he possesses to act upon Nature is in itself a proof that 
he must have visible or secret connecting links homogeneous 
with that Nature, vital and physical. 
Some men are not only conscious of their power over Nature, 
but exercise themselves in it, and strengthen it to a remark- 
able degree. We may instance the Rareys, and tamers of 
wild beasts or reptiles in all countries, who, by faith in their 
power, and by the exercise of their will, tighten or relax 
the secret sympathetic links at their pleasure, and make the 
fiercest of such animals tremble at their look, and end by 
lying down like lambs at their feet. 
Of such are mesmerists, who, by the power of their will 
alone, transmitted through the secret links which connect 
them with their patients, send them to sleep and make them 
do many wonderful things. 
