THE SOUL IN NATURE. 
89 
other. The Hindoos say—when Brahme sleeps, all 
existence passes away; but when Brahme wakes, his 
thoughts take shape under the agency of Brahma, and 
creation follows. What is Brahme but Deity, whose 
will controls Brahma or Nature, and through thought 
gives impulse to a perennial birth of beauty, each separate 
birth being the expression of that thought or will which 
called it into action? The Greeks had Proteus, who 
took many shapes, yet never lost his identity; and Pro¬ 
teus was an impersonation of the creative power working 
underneath and continually revealing itself, never in two 
forms alike, yet ever the same in purport and essence. 
Proteus is Brahma at three removes, degraded somewhat 
by his passage through the Egyptian mythology, into 
which he passes with other gods from India, and so into 
the fanciful, but scarcely sublime category of Hellenic 
deities. 
Literatures, mythologies, traditions, all attest the 
union of matter and spirit; and instinct, turning a deaf 
ear to the propoundings of the spiritualist and the dogmas 
of the materialist, declares for the two elements, and holds 
them essential to each other. Science completes this 
work, and marries the two worlds together by the 
wedding-ring of universal law, which it is the task of 
science to comprehend and apply in accordance with the 
strictest generalities. Let it not be thought, however, 
that this work is yet complete—for in the infancy of 
science we can only expect approximations; and such of 
these as physics are capable of affording, the labour of 
Oersted has thrown together in one of the most enchant¬ 
ing volumes ever published, which has attained a cos- 
