and creeds and modes of living seem a travesty of truth.
Our society is encumbered by ponderous machinery, which
resembles the endless aqueducts which the Romans built
over hill and dale and which are superseded by the
discovery of the law that water rises to the level of
its source. It is a Chinese wall which any nimble Tartar
can leap over. It is a standing army, not so good as a
peace. It is a graduated, titled, richly appointed empire,
quite superfluous when town-meetings are found to answer
just as well.

Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by
short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls. When the
fruit is despatched, the leaf falls. The circuit of the
waters is mere falling. The walking of man and all animals
is a falling forward. All our manual labor and works of
strength, as prying, splitting, digging, rowing and so
forth, are done by dint of continual falling, and the
globe, earth, moon, comet, sun, star, fall for ever and ever.

The simplicity of the universe is very different from
the simplicity of a machine. He who sees moral nature
out and out and thoroughly knows how knowledge is acquired
and character formed, is a pedant. The simplicity of nature
is not that which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible.
The last analysis can no wise be made. We judge of a man's
wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of the
inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth. The wild
fertility of nature is felt in comparing our rigid names
and reputations with our fluid consciousness. We pass in