tell us, is on the whole breath and sunlight; the breath of living
creatures who have lived in the vast swamps and forests of some
primeval world, and the sunlight which transmuted that breath into
the leaves and stems of trees, magically locked up for ages in
that black stone, to become, when it is burnt at last, light and
carbonic acid as it was at first. For though you must not breathe
your breath again, you may at least eat your breath, if you will
allow the sun to transmute it for you into vegetables; or you may
enjoy its fragrance and its colour in the shape of a lily or a
rose. When you walk in a sunlit garden, every word you speak,
every breath you breathe, is feeding the plants and flowers
around. The delicate surface of the green leaves absorbs the
carbonic acid, and parts it into its elements, retaining the
carbon to make woody fibre, and courteously returning you the
oxygen to mingle with the fresh air, and be inhaled by your lungs
once more. Thus do you feed the plants; just as the plants feed
you: while the great life-giving sun feeds both; and the geranium
standing in the sick child's window does not merely rejoice his
eye and mind by its beauty and freshness, but repays honestly the
trouble spent on it; absorbing the breath which the child needs
not, and giving to him the breath which he needs.

So are the services of all things constituted according to a
Divine and wonderful order, and knit together in mutual dependence
and mutual helpfulness--a fact to be remembered with hope and
comfort: but also with awe and fear. For as in that which is
above nature, so in nature itself; he that breaks one physical law
is guilty of all. The whole universe, as it were, takes up arms
against him; and all nature, with her numberless and unseen
powers, is ready to avenge herself on him, and on his children