Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/70

 plants, and in other cases resemblances by introducing rhymes. It is the same with the hypotheses we form ; for a number of these we must have, or we should never be able to remember things. What I mention is, indeed, nothing new, but it is a thing that is constantly coming to one’s notice. So it is that we attempt to make some sense of the material world, though the question is whether everything is legible to us. At the same time it is certainly possible, by means of much thought and inquiry, to find a meaning in things that are either for ourselves or altogether meaningless. In the sands we see faces, landscapes, and the like; though they certainly cannot be intended. Symmetry is another case in point; and the same may be said of the gradually ascending scale apparent in the animal kingdom :all this is not in things but in us. And in general we cannot too frequently reflect that in observing Nature and the order found in Nature, it is ourselves that we are observing there.

The attempts of the physicistsof Le Sage, for exampleto explain the effects of attraction and affinity on mechanical principles are further examples of what I mean. Such attempts, however, are always as useful as to have invented a machine capable of reproducing the effects mentioned. If someone could construct a machine representing the motions of the heavenly bodies exactly as they occur in Nature, would not the inventor deserve great credit, even though the universe does not go by clockwork? A good deal would be discovered through such a machine which had not seemed to have been