and derision? Are we not engaged to a serious resentment of
this use that is made of us? Are we tickled trout, and fools of nature?
One look at the face of heaven and earth lays all petulance at rest,
and soothes us to wiser convictions. To the intelligent, nature converts
itself into a vast promise, and will not be rashly explained. Her secret
is untold. Many and many an Oedipus arrives; he has the whole mystery
teeming in his brain. Alas! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill;
no syllable can he shape on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like the
fresh rainbow into the deep, but no archangel's wing was yet strong
enough to follow it and report of the return of the curve. But it
also appears that our actions are seconded and disposed to greater
conclusions than we designed. We are escorted on every hand through life
by spiritual agents, and a beneficent purpose lies in wait for us.
We cannot bandy words with Nature, or deal with her as we deal with
persons. If we measure our individual forces against hers we may easily
feel as if we were the sport of an insuperable destiny. But if, instead
of identifying ourselves with the work, we feel that the soul of the
workman streams through us, we shall find the peace of the morning
dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity
and chemistry, and, over them, of life, preexisting within us in their
highest form.

The uneasiness which the thought of our helplessness in the chain of
causes occasions us, results from looking too much at one condition
of nature, namely, Motion. But the drag is never taken from the wheel.
Wherever the impulse exceeds, the Rest or Identity insinuates its
compensation. All over the wide fields of earth grows the prunella or
self-heal. After every foolish day we sleep off the fumes and furies of
its hours; and though we are always engaged with particulars, and
often enslaved to them, we bring with us to every experiment the innate
universal laws. These, while they exist in the mind as ideas, stand
around us in nature forever embodied, a present sanity to expose and
cure the insanity of men. Our servitude to particulars betrays into a
hundred foolish expectations. We anticipate a new era from the invention
of a locomotive, or a balloon; the new engine brings with it the old
checks. They say that by electro-magnetism your salad shall be grown
from the seed whilst your fowl is roasting for dinner; it is a symbol of
our modern aims and