arthquakes, storms, and
especially monstrosities, animal or vegetable, exercised their barbaric
wonder. The mystery and miracle which underlies the unfolding of every
bud, the development of every embryo, the growth of every atom of tissue,
in any organism, animal or vegetable--to all this their intellectual eye
was blind. How different from such a state of mind, that calm and
constant wonder, humbling and yet inspiring, with which the modern man of
science searches into the "open mystery" of the universe; and sees that
the true marvel lies, not in the infringement of law, but in its
permanence; not in the imperfect, but in the perfect; not in disease, but
in health; not in deformity, but in beauty.

These words are true of all nature; and specially true, it seems to me,
of our outward senses and faculties; true of sight, hearing, speech. The
wonder, I think, with the wise man will be, not that there are deaf and
dumb persons to be found here and there among us: but that the average,
nay, the majority of mankind, are not deaf and dumb. Paradoxical as this
assertion may seem at first, a little thought I believe will prove it to
be reasonable.

Whatever view you take of the origin of sight, hearing, voice, the wonder
to a thoughtful mind is just the same; how, under the storm of
circumstances, and through the lapse of ages, those faculties have not
been lost again and again, by countless individuals, nay, by the whole
species. For we must confess that those faculties are gradually
developed in each individual; that every animal and every human being
which is born into the world, has built up, unconsciously, involuntarily,
and as it were out of nothing, those delicate and complex organs, by
which he afterwards learns to see, hear, and utter sounds. Is not the
wonder, that he should, in the majority of cases, succeed without any
effort of his own?

And if I am answered, that the success is owing to hereditary tendencies,
and to the laws by which the offspring resembles the parents, I answer:
Is not that a greater wonder still? A wonder which all the discoveries
of the scalpel and the microscope have been as yet unable, and will be, I
believe, to the last unable, to unravel, even to touch? A wonder which
can be explained by no theories of vibratory atoms, vital forces, plastic
powers of nature, or other such phrases, which are but metaphysical
abstractions, having no counterpart in fact, and only hiding from us our