The eye reads omens where it goes , 
And speaks all languages the rose ; 
And , striving to he man , the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form. 
—Nature , 4., 7. 
The fossil strata show us that Nature began with rudimental forms, and rose 
to the more complex as fast as the earth was fit for their dwelling-place; and 
that the lower perish as the higher appear. Very few of our race can be said to 
be yet finished men. We still carry sticking to us some remains of the preced¬ 
ing inferior quadruped organization. . . The age of the quadruped is to go out, 
—the age of the brain and of the heart is to come in. And if one shall read the 
future of the race hinted in the organic effort of Nature to mount and melior¬ 
ate, and the corresponding impulse to the Better in the human being, we shall 
dare affirm that there is nothing he will not overcome and convert, until at last 
culture shall absorb the chaos and gehenna. He will convert the Furies into 
Muses and the hells into benefit.— Culture. 
—Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
