fallen
upon a discovery which, in itself, would have sufficed to overwhelm the
mind:--but what is it that we are actually called upon to comprehend?
That each atom attracts--sympathizes with the most delicate movements of
every other atom, and with each and with all at the same time, and
forever, and according to a determinate law of which the complexity,
even considered by itself solely, is utterly beyond the grasp of the
imagination of man. If I propose to ascertain the influence of one mote
in a sunbeam upon its neighboring mote, I cannot accomplish my purpose
without first counting and weighing all the atoms in the Universe and
defining the precise positions of all at one particular moment. If I
venture to displace, by even the billionth part of an inch, the
microscopical speck of dust which lies now upon the point of my finger,
what is the character of that act upon which I have adventured? I have
done a deed which shakes the Moon in her path, which causes the Sun to
be no longer the Sun, and which alters forever the destiny of the
multitudinous myriads of stars that roll and glow in the majestic
presence of their Creator.

_These_ ideas--conceptions such as _these_--unthoughtlike
thoughts--soul-reveries rather than conclusions or even considerations
of the intellect:--ideas, I repeat, such as these, are such as we can
alone hope profitably to entertain in any effort at grasping the great
principle, _Attraction_.

But now,--_with_ such ideas--with such a _vision_ of the marvellous
complexity of Attraction fairly in his mind--let any person competent of
thought on such topics as these, set himself to the task of imagining a
_principle_ for the phaenomena observed--a condition from which they
sprang.

Does not so evident a brotherhood among the atoms point to a common
parentage? Does not a sympathy so omniprevalent, so ineradicable, and so
thoroughly irrespective, suggest a common paternity as its source? Does
not one extreme impel the reason to the other? Does not the infinitude
of division refer to the utterness of individuality? Does not the
entireness of the complex hint at the perfection of the simple? It is
_not_ that the atoms, as we see them, are divided or that they are
complex in their relations--but that they are inconceivably divided and
unutterably complex:--it is the extremeness of the conditions to which I
now allude, rather than to the conditions themselves. In a word, is it
not because the atoms