cries
many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a
truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning
marl of a Hell-on-Earth?

Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives
an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads
us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views
and glances. For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a
Whole:--

"Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: 'If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the Universe, God is there.' Thou
thyself, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a
Prosaist, knowing GOD only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the
world where at least FORCE is not? The drop which thou shakest from thy
wet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept
away; already on the wings of the North-wind, it is nearing the Tropic
of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless? Thinkest
thou there is aught motionless; without Force, and utterly dead?

"As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little fire
which glows star-like across the dark-growing (_nachtende_) moor, where
the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy
lost horse-shoe,--is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the
whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, that
smithy-fire was (primarily) kindled at the Sun; is fed by air that
circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dog-star; therein,
with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force of Man, are
cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force brought about; it
is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of
Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on the
bosom of the All; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influence
reach quite through the All; whose dingy Priest, not by word, yet by
brain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force; nay preaches forth
(exoterically enough) one little textlet from the Gospel of Freedom, the
Gospel of Man's Force, commanding, and one day to be all-commanding.

"Detached, separated! I say there is no such separation: nothing
hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a withered
leaf, works together with all; is borne forward on the bottomless,
shoreless flood of Acti