seen the nettles spring up which grow everywhere among the ruins of human
dwellings."




CHAPTER XII.

The path of every star is fixed and limited, every plant bears flowers
and fruit which in form and color exactly resemble their kind, and in all
the fundamental characteristics of their qualities and dispositions, of
their instinctive bent and external impulse, all animals of the same
species resemble each other; thus, the hunter who knows the red-deer in
his father's forest, may know in every forest on earth how the stag will
behave in any given case. The better a genus is fitted for variability
in the conformation of its individuals, the higher is the rank it is
entitled to hold in the graduated series of creatures capable of
development; and it is precisely that wonderful many-sidedness of his
inner life, and of its outward manifestation, which assigns to man his
superiority over all other animated beings.

Some few of our qualities and activities can be fitly symbolized in
allegorical fashion by animals; thus, courage finds an emblem in the
lion, gentleness in the dove, but the perfect human form has satisfied a
thousand generations, and will satisfy a thousand more, when we desire to
reduce the divinity to a sensible image, for, in truth, our heart is as
surely capable of comprehending "God in us,"--that is in our feelings--
as our intellect is capable of comprehending His outward manifestation
in the universe.