impurity of their nature still conjoined to the material substances
which engender us; and the love of great souls for the straight line
seems to show in them an intuition of heaven. Between these two lines
there is a gulf fixed like that between the finite and the infinite,
between matter and spirit, between man and the idea, between motion
and the object moved, between the creature and God. Ask Love the
Divine to grant you his wings and you can cross that gulf. Beyond it
begins the revelation of the Word.

"No part of those things which you call material is without its own
meaning; lines are the boundaries of solid parts and imply a force of
action which you suppress in your formulas,--thus rendering those
formulas false in relation to substances taken as a whole. Hence the
constant destruction of the monuments of human labor, which you
supply, unknown to yourselves, with acting properties. Nature has
substances; your science combines only their appearances. At every
step Nature gives the lie to all your laws. Can you find a single one
that is not disproved by a fact? Your Static laws are at the mercy of
a thousand accidents; a fluid can overthrow a solid mountain and prove
that the heaviest substances may be lifted by one that is
imponderable.

"Your laws on Acoustics and Optics are defied by the sounds which you
hear within yourselves in sleep, and by the light of an electric sun
whose rays often overcome you. You know no more how light makes itself
seen within you, than you know the simple and natural process which
changes it on the throats of tropic birds to rubies, sapphires,
emeralds, and opals, or keeps it gray and brown on the breasts of the
same birds under the cloudy skies of Europe, or whitens it here in the
bosom of our polar Nature. You know not how to decide whether color is