lly known to us: but who knows
what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of
causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny
and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may
have become familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides
and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's
Eclipses; by all which the condition of its little Creek is regulated,
and may, from time to time (_un_miraculously enough), be quite overset
and reversed? Such a Minnow is Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his
Ocean the immeasurable All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the
mysterious Course of Providence through AEons of AEons.

'We speak of the Volume of Nature: and truly a Volume it is,--whose
Author and Writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, does man, so much as
well know the Alphabet thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and grand
descriptive Pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through
Solar Systems, and Thousands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a
Volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writing;
of which even Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and
there a line. As for your Institutes, and Academies of Science, they
strive bravely; and, from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably
intertwisted hieroglyphic writing, pick-out, by dextrous combination,
some Letters in the vulgar Character, and therefrom put together this
and the other economic Recipe, of high avail in Practice. That Nature
is more than some boundless Volume of such Recipes, or huge, well-nigh
inexhaustible Domestic-Cookery Book, of which the whole secret will in
this manner one day evolve itself, the fewest dream.

* * * * *

'Custom,' continues the Professor, 'doth make dotards of us all.
Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is the greatest of Weavers;
and weaves air-raiment for all the Spirits of the Universe; whereby
indeed these dwell with us visibly, as ministering servants, in our
houses and workshops; but their spiritual nature becomes, to the most,
forever hidden. Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us,
from the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it;
that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are
oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay,
what is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom;
an ever-r