ng attributes and situation, to rise up and run, to
perform the strange and revolting round of physical functions. The sight
of a flower, the note of a bird, will often move him deeply; yet he
looks unconcerned on the impassable distances and portentous bonfires of
the universe. He comprehends, he designs, he tames nature, rides the
sea, ploughs, climbs the air in a balloon, makes vast inquiries, begins
interminable labours, joins himself into federations and populous
cities, spends his days to deliver the ends of the earth or to benefit
unborn posterity; and yet knows himself for a piece of unsurpassed
fragility and the creature of a few days. His sight, which conducts him,
which takes notice of the farthest stars, which is miraculous in every
way and a thing defying explanation or belief, is yet lodged in a piece
of jelly, and can be extinguished with a touch. His heart, which all
through life so indomitably, so athletically labours, is but a capsule,
and may be stopped with a pin. His whole body, for all its savage
energies, its leaping and its winged desires, may yet be tamed and
conquered by a draught of air or a sprinkling of cold dew. What he calls
death, which is the seeming arrest of everything, and the ruin and
hateful transformation of the visible body, lies in wait for him
outwardly in a thousand accidents, and grows up in secret diseases from
within. He is still learning to be a man when his faculties are already
beginning to decline; he has not yet understood himself or his position
before he inevitably dies. And yet this mad, chimerical creature can
take no thought of his last end, lives as though he were eternal,
plunges with his vulnerable body into the shock of war, and daily
affronts death with unconcern. He cannot take a step without pain or
pleasure. His life is a tissue of sensations, which he distinguishes as
they seem to come more directly from himself or his surroundings. He is
conscious of himself as a joyer or a sufferer, as that which craves,
chooses, and is satisfied; conscious of his surroundings as it were of
an inexhaustible purveyor, the source of aspects, inspirations,
wonders, cruel knocks and transporting caresses. Thus he goes on his
way, stumbling among delights and agonies.

Matter is a far-fetched theory, and materialism is without a root in
man. To him everything is important in the degree to which it moves him.
The telegraph wires and posts, the electricity speeding from clerk to