logist, the
other the great mathematician, of Cambridge. Agassiz, having studied the
formation of radiate animals, and having found them all referable to
three different plans of structure, asked Prof. Pierce, without
informing him of his discovery, how to execute all the variations
possible, conformed to the fundamental idea of a radiated structure
around a central axis. Prof. Pierce, although quite ignorant of natural
history, at once devised the very three plans discovered by Agassiz, as
the only fundamental plans which could be framed in accordance with the
given elements. How significantly do such correspondences speak of the
working of mind in nature, moulding it in conformity with ideas of
reason. Thus to see the laws of thought exhibiting themselves as also
the laws of being seems to me a fact sufficient of itself to prove the
presence of an over-ruling mind in nature.

Is there any way of escaping this obvious conclusion? The only method
that has been suggested has been to refer these harmonies of nature back
to the original regularity of the atoms. As the drops of frozen moisture
on the window pane build up the symmetrical frost-forms without design
or reason, by virtue of the original similarity of the component parts,
so do the similar atoms, without any more reason or plan, build up the
harmonious forms of nature.

But this answer brings us face to face with a third still more
significant problem, a still greater obstacle to materialism. Why are
the atoms of nature thus regular, thus similar, one to another? Here are
millions on millions of atoms of gold, each like its fellow atom.
Millions and millions of atoms of oxygen, each with the same velocity of
movement, same weight and chemical properties. All the millions on
millions on millions of atoms on the globe are not of infinitely varied
shape, weight, size, quality; but there are only some seventy different
kinds, and all the millions of one kind, just as like one another as
bullets out of the same mould, so that each new atom of oxygen that
comes to a burning flame does the same work and acts in precisely the
same way as its fellows. Did you ever think of that? If you have ever
realized what it means, you must recognize this uniformity of the atoms,
billions and billions of them as like one another as if run out of the
same mould--as the most astonishing thing in nature.

Now, among the atoms, there can have been no birth, no death, no
struggle for e