Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1841 Excerpt: ... Who shall explain to us this mysterious union--tell us where sensation ends, and thought begins, or where organization passes into lite? Turn to what pursuit of science, or point of observation we will, it is still the same. In every department and study, we come to a region in which our inquiries cannot penetrate.--Everywhere our thoughts run into the vast, the indefinite, the incomprehensible; time stretches to eternity, calculation to ' numbers without number,' being to Infinite Greatness. Every path of our reflection brings us, at length, to the shrine of the unknown and the unfathomable, where we must sit down, and receive with devout and childlike meekness, if we receive at all, the voice of the oracle within. Nor is there a plant so humble, no hyssop by the wall, nor flower nor weed in the garden that springeth from the bosom of the earth, but it is an organized and living mystery. The secrets of the abyss are not more inscrutable, than the work that is wrought in its hidden germ. The goings on of the heavens are not more incomprehensible than its growth, as it waves in the breeze. Its life, that which constitutes its life, who can tell what it is? The functions that constitute its growth, flower, and fruit, the processes of secretion, the organs or the affinities, by which every part receives the material that answers its purpose, who can unfold or explain them? Yes, the simplest spire of grass has wonders in it, in which the wisest philosopher may find a reason for humility, and the proudest skeptic an argument for his faith. Life, I repeat--and I say, let the dull in thought, let the children be aroused by the reflection--life is full of mysteries. If we were wandering through the purlieus of a vast palace, and found here and there a closed door,...
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