THE SOUL IX NATURE. 
93 
cular phenomenon. There is no animal, plant, mineral, 
or gas, but is passing through a succession of changes, 
growth, decay, dissolution, re-combination; yet each one 
has a permanent existence by virtue of the thought which 
it represents, because the laws of Nature are constant; 
and however fleeting and fading the forms of the world, 
the idea of creation is continually reproduced, and through 
the medium of the ever-changing material, the unchanging 
and eternal spirit is to be seen. 
The moment w r e arrive at this stage of thought, we 
perceive how hollow are those assertions of the superiority 
of matter—how vain those endeavours to disprove the 
existence of mind, over which so many have wasted their 
lives, hopelessly forswearing the very intellect which by 
its partial view's led them into a complexity of errors. 
Before this fact, the very earth passes into the condition 
of a shadow; and beyond the almost intangible forms of 
material existence lies a thought more solid than the 
adamant—a thought which operates silently, and finds 
representation in that world of change which lives only 
to embody the idea of permanence. The flower, the 
tree, the cloud, the sunbeam, the granite rock, have no 
existence but as letters of the alphabet of Nature. As 
letters in an alphabet, they are proven and interwoven 
into syllables and words, and as letters of an alphabet 
again displaced to enter into new combinations. As 
letters of an alphabet they exist also, not for themselves, 
but as elements through which Intelligence is spelt into 
expression, and thought fashioned into visible form. 
What is the flow r er but an assemblage of tissues, v T hich is 
again but an assemblage of gases ? What is the cloud 
