Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/425

Rh Each and all such disguises and other resources remind us that not merely some poor worm's instinct, as we call it, but the mind of the universe rather, which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. All the wit in the world was brought to bear on each case to secure its end. It was long ago in a full senate of all intellects determined how cocoons had best be suspended. Kindred mind with mine, that approves and admires, decided it so.

Much study, a weariness of the flesh! Ah, but did they not intend that we should read and ponder, who covered the whole earth with alphabets, primers, or Bibles, coarse or fine print? The very débris of the cliffs are covered with geographic lichens. No surface is permitted to be bare long. Was not he who creates lichens the abettor of Cadmus when he invented letters? Types almost arrange themselves into words and sentences, as dust arranges itself under the magnet. Print! it is a close-hugging lichen that forms on a favorable surface, which paper offers. The linen gets itself wrought into paper that the song of the shirt may be printed oil it. Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world?

Feb. 19, 1855. Many will complain of my lectures that they are transcendental, can't