A river runs itself clear during the night, and in sleep
thought becomes pellucid. All the hurrying to and fro, the
unrest and stress, the agitation and confusion subside. Like a
sweet pure spring, thought pours forth to meet the light, and
is illumined to its depths. The dawn at my window ever causes
a desire for larger thought, the recognition of the light at
the moment of waking kindles afresh the wish for a broad day of
the mind. There is a certainty that there are yet ideas further, and
greater--that there is still a limitless beyond. I know at that moment that
there is no limit to the things that may be yet in material and tangible
shape besides the immaterial perceptions of the soul. The dim white light of
the dawn speaks it. This prophet which has come with its wonders to the
bedside of every human being for so many thousands of years faces me once
again with the upheld finger of light. Where is the limit to that physical
sign?

>From space to the sky, from the sky to the hills, and the sea;
to every blade of grass, to every leaf, to the smallest insect,
to the million waves of ocean. Yet this earth itself appears
but a mote in that sunbeam by which we are conscious of one
narrow streak in the abyss. A beam crosses my silent chamber
from the window, and atoms are visible in it; a beam slants
between the fir-trees, and particles rise and fall within, and cross it
while the air each side seems void. Through the heavens a beam slants, and
we are aware of the star-stratum in which our earth moves. But what may be
without that stratum? Certainly it is not a void. This light tells us much,
but I think in the course of time yet more delicate and subtle mediums than
light may be found, and through these we shall see into the shadows of the
sky. When will it be possible to be certain that the capacity of a single