HINTS. 
117 
Time and space reproduce and remodify the modulations 
of environment. The caroling of the birds in woods, fields 
and meadows is a continuation of the refrain excited by the 
play of the wind in the tree-tops, and the rippling of the 
brooks ; and all of which are reparaphrased and re-emphasized 
in the harp of JEolus and the grander orchestrations of man. 
The wail of a Rachel, and the piteous outcries of a Job, and 
the moanings of a wounded soldier are a reflex of the minor 
key running through the throes of all existence. 
The ingenuity and skill with which the beaver, with his 
trowel, plans aud builds his lodges, reproduce themselves in 
the construction by men, of the pyramids, and an auditorium. 
All substances, all matters, all thoughts, all intelligence, 
all sentiments, all superstitions, myths, growths, songs, all 
sciences, arts, precedents, heroisms, messiahships, all and 
every experience is illustrative of what is accomplished 
through the conservation and correlation of the forces in 
nature. Reproductions and re-embodiments whose trends 
are from the incomprehensible to the illimitable ! They are 
also the hints of what determines the degrees of development 
in the scale of being, and suggest the incompleteness of all 
things when measured in the balance of eternity. 
Birth and cradle, death and the grave, are hints and shad¬ 
ows of the boundaries and limitations of entities. 
They also suggest that in the absolute there is no first 
cause. Causation is a measure of time but not of eternals. 
Every atom and every energy is an activity of intellectuality ; 
an activity without beginning or ending. We cannot differ¬ 
entiate between the organic and inorganic, the chemical' and 
the vital forces and conceive of mind without matter, or mat¬ 
ter without mind. All forces visible or invisible to our senses 
embody substantiality. Nothing can be destroyed. What 
we apprehend as disease and death is the triumph of other 
conditions of vitality than we are led to ascribe to health, 
actuality and entity. Were the solar systems, or any other of 
the planetary systems, to be scattered by their convulsive 
agencies, they are capable through the substances composing 
them of reconstructing themselves somewhere in eternity. 
