nearer would you be to the deepest question of all—­Do these things exist, or only appear?  Are they solid realities, or a mere phantasmagoria, orderly indeed, and law-ruled, but a phantasmagoria still; a picture-book by which God speaks to rational essences, created in His own likeness?  And even had you solved that old problem, and decided for Berkeley or against him, you would still have to learn from these forests a knowledge which enters into man, not through the head, but through the heart; which (let some modern philosophers say what they will) defies all analysis, and can be no more defined or explained by words than a mother’s love.  I mean, the causes and the effects of their beauty; that ‘AEsthetic of plants,’ of which Schleiden has spoken so well in that charming book of his, The Plant, which all should read who wish to know somewhat of ‘The Open Secret.’

But when they read it, let them read with open hearts.  For that same ‘Open Secret’ is, I suspect, one of those which God may hide from the wise and prudent, and yet reveal to babes.

At least, so it seemed to me, the first day that I went, awe struck, into the High Woods; and so it seemed to me, the last day that I came, even more awe-struck, out of them.

CHAPTER VIII:  LA BREA

We were, of course, desirous to visit that famous Lake of Pitch, which our old nursery literature described as one of the ’Wonders of the World.’  It is not that; it is merely a very odd, quaint, unexpected, and only half-explained phenomenon:  but no wonder.  That epithet should be kept for such matters as the growth of a crystal, the formation of a cell, the germination of a seed, the coming true of a plant, whether from a fruit or from a cutting:  in a word, for any and all those hourly and momentary miracles which were attributed of old to some Vis Formatrix of nature; and are now attributed to some other abstract formula, as they will be to some fresh one, and to a dozen more, before the century is out; because the more accurately and deeply they are investigated, the more inexplicable they will be found.

So it is; but the ‘public’ are not inclined to believe that so it is, and will not see, till their minds get somewhat of a truly scientific training.

If any average educated person were asked—­Which seemed to him more wonderful, that a hen’s egg should always produce a chicken, or that it should now and then produce a sparrow or a duckling?—­can it be doubted what answer he would give? or that it would be the wrong answer?  What answer, again, would he make to the question—­Which is more wonderful, that dwarfs and giants (i.e. people under four feet six or over six feet six) should be exceedingly rare, or that the human race is not of all possible heights from three inches to thirty feet?  Can it be doubted that in this case, as in the last, the wrong answer would be given?