Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/48

38 other creatures of the universe, thus making it attributable to himself, and thereby rendering him a free, a moral, and an accountable agent. If we can discover such a fact as this, we shall be able, out of it, to answer the question with which we are engaged. Let us, then, look abroad into the universe once more, and there, throughout "all that it inherit," mark, if we can, the absence of some fact which is to be found conspicuously present in man.

Continuing, then, our survey of the universe, we behold works of all kinds, and of surpassing beauty, carried on. Mighty machinery is everywhere at work; and on all sides we witness marvellous manifestations of life, of power, and of reason. The sun performs his revolution in the sky, and keeps his appointed pathway with unwearied and unerring foot, while the seasons depend upon his shining. The ant builds her populous cities among the fallen forest-leaves, collects her stores, and fills her granaries with incomparable foresight. Each living creature guards itself from danger, and provides for its wants with infallible certainty and skill. They can foresee the very secrets of the heavens, and betake themselves to places of shelter with the thunder in their quaking hearts long before the bolt falls which shatters the green palaces of the woods. But still verily "there is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen: the lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it. The depth saith, It is not in me;