m God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the
deer run away from us; the bear and tiger rend us. We do not know
the uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato
and the vine. Is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a
grandeur, a face of him? Yet this may show us what discord is
between man and nature, for you cannot freely admire a noble
landscape, if laborers are digging in the field hard by. The poet finds
something ridiculous in his delight, until he is out of the sight of
men.

CHAPTER VIII.

PROSPECTS.

IN inquiries respecting the laws of the world and the frame of things,
the highest reason is always the truest. That which seems faintly
possible--it is so refined, is often faint and dim because it is deepest
seated in the mind among the eternal verities. Empirical science is
apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and
processes, to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the
whole. The savant becomes unpoetic. But the best read naturalist
who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there
remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not
to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of
known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit,
by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility. He will
perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student
than preciseness and infallibility; that a guess is often more fruitful
than an indisputable affirmation, and that a dream may let us deeper
into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments.

For, the problems to be solved are precisely those which the
physiologist and the naturalist omit to state. It is not so pertinent to
man to know all the individuals of the animal kingdom, as it is to
know whence and whereto is this tyrannizing unity in his
constitution, which evermore separates and classifies things,
endeavoring to reduce the most diverse to one form. When I behold
a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order
and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of
multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity. I cannot greatly honor
minuteness in details, so long as there is no hint to explain
the relation between things and thoughts; no ray upon the
_metaphysics_ of conchology, of botany, of the arts, to show the
relation of th