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perceive the visible, ears to receive that which is audible. Of 
scents, what to us would have been the use had not nostrils 
been given us ? And what perception of sweets and bitters 
would there have been had not the tongue been wrought 
sensitive to these ? . . . And, moreover, seemeth it not to thee 
like a work of forethought, since the eye is feeble, to close it 
with the door of the eyelid ; ^nd, that not even winds might 
harm it, to give it the strainer of the eyelashes, and then to 
roof it with the eyebrow, that the sweat of the head might not 
hurt it ? Art thou in doubt whether these things were done 
with forethought, and whether they are the works of chance or 
of knowledge ?”* But the “ free thought ” of “ great thinkers ” 
knows better than to ask such simple questions. It warns us 
rather, with a darker and more desperate heathen, Lucretius, 
to “ shun the weakness of supposing that the light of the eye 
was made bright that we might see, and that the legs were 
jointed that we might stride, or the arms and hands given to 
minister to our uses. This is all perverted. Nothing was 
born in the body that we might be able to use it, but the 
thing that is born produces the use.”t 
Who would be a “ great thinker,” thus to violate the 
truest instincts of man? Better wield the trowel or carry 
the hod than pervert our simple and primary ideas of fact and 
truth. I shall then at least know that I spread my mortar 
and temper it well, and lay my brick to a true line that I may 
build a strong wall. And I shall not readily be mystified into 
fancying that the hand which wields the trowel was less 
purposely intended and fitted for its manifold labours. 
It requires nothing less than that strange deluding power 
which the human mind can exercise over itself to dim our 
intuitional perception and acknowledgment of definite purpose 
running through all the arrangements of nature. It requires 
all the effort of the process known now as “.great thinking ” 
to achieve this disastrous result, and to imagine that with this 
vast creation spread around us we can learn nothing about its 
Maker (if indeed it ever had one), and can infer nothing from 
the manifest fact of purpose as to the existence of an Infinite 
Mind, in which that purpose was formed. 
What is it, then, which we claim the power to perceive, and 
which we hold that we absolutely know ? We claim the power 
of perceiving a principle pervading all nature as far as we can 
search its secrets. What we thus perceive is the simple 
obvious fact that everywhere certain means produce certain 
Xenophon, Memorabilia , i. 4, 5. 
f Lucretius, iv. 821-840. 
