MAN AND NATURE. 
549 
tions mentioned in the last few paragraphs, therefore, do act in 
the ways ascribed to them, though our limited faculties are at 
present, perhaps forever, incapable of weighing their imme¬ 
diate, still more their ultimate consequences. But our inabil¬ 
ity to assign definite values to these causes of the disturbance 
of natural arrangements is not a reason for ignoring the exist¬ 
ence of such causes in any general view of the relations be¬ 
tween man and nature, and we are never justified in assuming 
a force to be insignificant because its measure is unknown, or 
even because no physical effect can now be traced to it as its 
origin. The collection of phenomena must precede the analy¬ 
sis of them, and every new fact, illustrative of the action and 
reaction between humanity and the material world around it, 
is another step toward the determination of the great question, 
whether man is of nature or above her. 
record, possibly legible even to created intelligence, of every act done, 
every word uttered, nay, of every wish and purpose and thought conceived 
by mortal man, from the birth of our first parent to the final extinction of 
our race ; so that the physical traces of our most secret sins shall last until 
time shall be merged in that eternity of which not science, but religion 
alone, assumes to take cognizance. 
