Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/15

Rh is no reflex process passing within the trees of the forest, when, drinking in life at their hidden roots, they dazzle thine eyes with beauty elaborated in darkness. Is this because there is no reason spread abroad through the kingdoms of nature? If thou thinkest so, go and be convinced of the contrary by beholding the geometry of the bee when she builds her honeyed cells. Here is reason, but reason going at once to its point, reason working out its end in a natural and straightforward line. It turns not back to question, and ask the meaning of itself. It entangles its employer in no perplexities, it weaves for him no web of matted sophistries; but how peaceful are its operations, and how perfect are its effects! Go thou, and do likewise.

Next turn to those who, thwarting the natural evolution of their powers, have turned round upon themselves, and questioned the light by which their spirits saw, and what a different spectacle is presented to thee here! What ravelled crossings, and what a breaking-up of the easy and natural mechanism of thought! For them the holy fire of their early inspiration is burnt out; and what is on the altar in its place? Perhaps a fire holier and more precious than the first; the light of an unconsuming and unlimited freedom, self-achieved, and higher than that which man was born to. But more probably the altar is overthrown, and the phantoms of scepticism, fatalism, materialism, or idealism, are haunting the ground whereon it stood, while the man lies prostrate