Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/193

Rh less astonishing and significant acts of standing still and sitting down?

Perhaps you have never heretofore reflected in your own mind either on the singularity or significancy of these acts. It is surely high time then, that you should inquire into a mystery in your own constitution, which, like many similar mysteries, is so frequently either overlooked by the thoughtlessness of man, or regarded as an ordinary natural act unworthy of notice, but which, when explored by the light of the, is calculated at once to delight, to instruct, to exalt, and to sanctify the explorer.

For, to begin with walking, whence comes it to pass, let me ask, that by setting one leg before the other alternately, you are enabled to move your whole body from place to place, and to continue its motion for any given length of time? Your body, it is plain, cannot move itself, neither has your body, of itself, the discernment to see, that the alternate protrusion of its legs is requisite for that purpose; for your body is mere matter, and mere matter, as every one knows, is utterly incapable either of putting itself in motion, or of devising any methodical plan fitted to produce motion. Every time then that you walk, you have an absolute demonstration that some other principle, superior to matter, is at work within you, and that you are