emical affinity, of magnetism, of electricity--and refer to them as if
they had an objective reality, when they are only concepts in our own
minds. Nature has no statute books and no legislators, though we
habitually think of her processes under these symbols. Human laws can be
annulled, but Nature's laws cannot. Her ways are irrevocable, though
theology revokes or suspends them in its own behalf. It was Joshua's
mind that stopped while he conquered his enemies, and not the sun.

The winds and the tides do not heed our prayers; fire and flood, famine
and pestilence, are deaf to our appeals. One of the cardinal doctrines
of Emerson was that all true prayers are self-answered--the spirit which
the act of prayer begets in the suppliant is the answer. A heartfelt
prayer for faith or courage or humility is already answered in the
attitude of soul that devoutly asks it. We know that the official
prayers in the churches for victory to the armies in the field are of no
avail--and how absurd to expect them to be--but who shall say that the
prayer of the soldier on the eve of battle may not steady his hand and
clinch his courage? But the prayer for rain or for heat or cold, or for
the stay of an epidemic, or for any material good, is as vain as to
reach one's hands for the moon.

IV. ORIGINAL SOURCES

The writers who go directly to life and Nature for their material are,
in every age, few compared with the great number that go to the
libraries and lecture-halls, and sustain only a second-hand relation to
the primary sources of inspiration. They cannot go directly to the
fountain-head, but depend upon those who can and do. They are like those
forms of vegetation, the mushrooms, that have no chlorophyll, and hence
cannot get their food from the primary sources, the carbonic acid in the
air; they must draw it from the remains of plants that did get it at
first-hand from Nature. Chlorophyll is the miracle-worker of the
vegetable world; it makes the solar power available for life. It is in
direct and original relation to the sun. It also makes animal life
possible. The plant can go to inorganic nature and through its
chlorophyll can draw the sustenance from it. We must go to the plant,
or to the animal that went to the plant, for our sustenance.

The secondary men go to books and creeds and institutions for their
religion, but the original men, having the divine chlorophyll, go to
Nature herself. The stars in their courses teach