410 Science and the Bible. [April,
tuitively
capable, in itself (though very differently, in minds of different
qualities), of judging of error, of preferring the good, of
appreciating the harmonious in all departments of knowledge ; and the
inferiority of a mind, in any of its faculties, is manifest in this,
that facts enter and remain mostly as disconnected thoughts, and do not
rise into their concordant or discordant or consecutive relations. The
mind must start from objects and experiences it has met with, in
striving towards any conclusions regarding the philosophy of nature.
A few tones of harmony may become the germ of a philosophy of music ;
while without the experience, the mind, as regards this faculty, would
have been a blank. Again, on looking abroad, man sees the regularly
recurring events of night and day, summer and winter, the rising and
setting of the sun and stars, and the proportions in nature's forms ;
and there is, here, a response within, if the sensibility be of high
order, as much as in the case of musical harmony; and there is a
yearning after other experiences of order, system, or harmony, in
objects or occurrences around ; and as the sensibility increases,
nature is found to be fuller and fuller of delight, and the music of
the spheres a reality. The mind observes the progress from the seed to
the plant, then to the blossoms, and finally the seed ; again, from the
egg to the perfect being, and so on; and in each case, the being
perpetuating itself in a seemingly unending round. This also strikes
the chord of system within, and, if the chord be a susceptible one,
and the mind vigorously expansive, the idea of growth or progress in
cyclical successions becomes a joy to it, and the endless roll of
earth's changes a chorus of harmonies. But it has been well said, that
we may be led by the very height of our pleasure in system, to imagine
it, where it is not, and so grow in error ; for mind is too apt to send
out its rampant fancies on the nurtured side, far beyond the truth. We
may, in our eagerness, through momentum gathered from nature around
us, spring with a bound from the earth to the heavens, or from life on
this little sphere to universal nature, and in order to account for
successive creations, conceive of creative power dropping seeds of
exist-
