Brahmins, to that
of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg.
There sits the Sphinx at the road-side, and from age to age, as each
prophet comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her riddle. There
seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms;
and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali,
preexist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they
are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is
the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or
the circumference of the invisible world. "Material objects," said a
French philosopher, "are necessarily kinds of _scoriae_ of the
substantial thoughts of the Creator, which must always preserve an
exact relation to their first origin; in other words, visible nature must
have a spiritual and moral side."

This doctrine is abstruse, and though the images of "garment,"
"scoriae," "mirror," &c., may stimulate the fancy, we must summon
the aid of subtler and more vital expositors to make it plain. "Every
scripture is to be interpreted by the same spirit which gave it forth,"
--is the fundamental law of criticism. A life in harmony with nature,
the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her
text. By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the
permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open
book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause.

A new interest surprises us, whilst, under the view now suggested,
we contemplate the fearful extent and multitude of objects; since
"every object rightly seen, unlocks a new faculty of the soul." That
which was unconscious truth, becomes, when interpreted and
defined in an object, a part of the domain of knowledge,--a new
weapon in the magazine of power.

CHAPTER V.

DISCIPLINE.

IN view of the significance of nature, we arrive at once at a new fact,
that nature is a discipline. This use of the world includes the
preceding uses, as parts of itself.

Space, time, society, labor, climate, food, locomotion, the animals,
the mechanical forces, give us sincerest lessons, day by day, whose
meaning is unlimited. They educate both the Understanding and the
Reason. Every property of matter is a school for the understanding,
--its solidity or resistance, its inertia, its extension, its figure, its
divisibility. The understanding adds, divides, combine