e concrete geometry and numbers. Common sense knows its own, and
recognizes the fact at first sight in chemical experiment. The common
sense of Franklin, Dalton, Davy and Black, is the same common sense
which made the arrangements which now it discovers.

If the identity expresses organized rest, the counter action runs also
into organization. The astronomers said, 'Give us matter and a little
motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we
should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove
to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and
centripetal forces. Once heave the ball from the hand, and we can show
how all this mighty order grew.'--'A very unreasonable postulate,' said
the metaphysicians, 'and a plain begging of the question. Could you not
prevail to know the genesis of projection, as well as the continuation
of it?' Nature, meanwhile, had not waited for the discussion, but, right
or wrong, bestowed the impulse, and the balls rolled. It was no great
affair, a mere push, but the astronomers were right in making much of
it, for there is no end to the consequences of the act. That famous
aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the
system, and through every atom of every ball; through all the races of
creatures, and through the history and performances of every individual.
Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no
man into the world without adding a small excess of his proper quality.
Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so to every
creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path,
a shove to put it on its way; in every instance a slight generosity, a
drop too much. Without electricity the air would rot, and without this
violence of direction which men and women have, without a spice of bigot
and fanatic, no excitement, no efficiency. We aim above the mark to hit
the mark. Every act hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it. And when
now and then comes along some sad, sharp-eyed man, who sees how paltry a
game is played, and refuses to play, but blabs the secret;--how then? Is
the bird flown? O no, the wary Nature sends a new troop of fairer forms,
of lordlier youths, with a little more excess of direction to hold
them fast to their several aim; makes them a little wrongheaded in that
direction in which they are rightest, and on goes the game again with
new whirl, for a g