28 April–4 May 1834

Vaccinium tenellum, Pyrus ovalis,^ Anemone ne- morosa, Fragaria virginiana : the day is as good for these as for oaks and corn. The air vibrates with equal facility to the thunder and to the squeak of a mouse ; invites man with provoking indifference to total indolence and to immortal actions. You may even shun the occasions of excitement by withdrawing from a profession and from society, and then the vast Eternity of capacity, of freedom, opens before you, but without a single impulse. A day is a rich abyss of means, yet mute and void. It demands some- thing godlike in him who has cast off the com- mon yokes and motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, vast his con- templations, that he may truly be a world, so- ciety, law to himself; that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others. It is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptation, that a reasoning Man, conscious of his powers and duties, annihilates all distinction of circum- I Amelanchier oblongifoUa (Gray).

Fontenelle said, if men should see the princi- ples of nature laid bare, they would cry, "What! is this all ? " How simple they are. How is the wonder perpetually lessened by showing the dis- proportionate effect upon the eye of simple com- bination ! The shell is a marvel until we see that it was not one effort, but each knot and spine has been in turn the lip of the structure. Shak- speare how inconceivable, until we have heard what Italian Novels and Plutarch's Lives and /^ old English Dramas he had, also what contem- porary fund of poetic diction. A Webster's speech is a marvel until we have learned that a part of it he has carried in his head for years, and a part of it was collected for him by young lawyers, and that Mr. Appleton furnished the facts, and a letter from Mr. Swain turned the paragraph. St. Peter's did not leap full grown out of the head of the architect ; the part that was builded instructed the eye of the next genera- tion how to build the rest. Mirabeau has his Dumont. The tree did not come from the acorn, but is an annual deposit of vegetation in a form determined by the existing disposition of the parts. Every leaf contains the eyes which are sufficient to originate a forest. The magnet is a marvel when we simply see it spontaneously wheel to the north, and cling to iron like one alive. The wonder diminishes when it is shown to be only one instance of a general law that affects all bodies and all phenomena, light, heat, electricity, animal life. A ship, a locomotive, a cotton factory is a wonder until we see how these Romes were not built in a day, but part sug- gested part, and complexity became simplicity. The poem, the oration, the book are super- human, but the wonder is out when you see the manuscript. Homer how wonderful, until the German erudition discovered a cyclus of Ho- meric poems. It is all one; a trick of cards, a jug- gler's sleight, an astronomical result, an algebraic formula, amazing when we see only the result, cheap when we are shown the means. This it is to conceive of acts and works, to throw myself into the object so that its history shall natu- rally evolve itself before me. Well, so does the Universe, Time, History evolve itself, so simply, so unmiraculously from the all-perceiv- ing mind.

The Idea according to which the Universe is made is wholly wanting to us ; is it not ? Yet it may or will be found to be constructed on as harmonious and perfect a thought, self-explain- ing, as a problem in geometry. The classification of all natural science is arbitrary, I believe; no method philosophical in any one. And yet in all the permutations and combinations suppos- able, might not a cabinet of shells or a Flora be thrown into one which should flash on us the very thought ? We take them out of compo- sition, and so lose their greatest beauty. The moon is an unsatisfactory sight if the eye be ex- clusively directed to it, and a shell retains but a small part of its beauty when examined sepa- rately.' All our classifications are introductory and very convenient, but must be looked on as temporary, and the eye always watching for the glimmering of that pure, plastic Idea. If Swara- merdam forgets that he is a man, and when you make any speculative suggestion as to the habits or origin or relation of insects, rebukes you, with civil submission that you may think what you please, he is only concerned for the facts, — he loses all that for which his science is of any worth. He is a mere insect-hunter, and no whit more respectable than the nuthatch or titmouse who are peeping and darting about after the same prey.