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=_201._= MAN MUST WORK IN HARMONY WITH PRINCIPLES.

Civilization depends on morality.  Everything good in man leans on what is higher.  This rule holds in small as in great.  Thus, all our strength and success in the work of our hands depend on our borrowing the aid of the elements.  You have seen a carpenter on a ladder with a broad-axe, chopping upward chips from a beam.  How awkward!  At what disadvantage he works!  But see him on the ground, dressing his timber under him.  Now, not his feeble muscles, but the force of gravity brings down the axe; that is to say, the planet itself splits his stick.  The farmer had much ill-temper, laziness, and shirking, to endure from his hand-sawyers until one day he bethought him to put his saw-mill on the edge of a waterfall; and the river never tires of turning his wheel; the river is good-natured, and never hints an objection.

We had letters to send:  couriers could not go fast enough, nor far enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses, bad roads in spring, snow-drifts in winter, heat in summer, could not get the horses out of a walk.  But we found out that the air and earth were full of electricity; and always going our way,—­just the way we wanted to send. Would he take a message? Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time.  Only one doubt occurred, one staggering objection,—­he had no carpet bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter.  But, after much thought and many experiments, we managed to meet the conditions, and to fold up the letter in such invisible compact form as he could carry in those invisible pockets of his, never wrought by needle and thread,—­and it went like a charm.

I admire still more than the saw-mill the skill which, on the sea-shore, makes the tides drive the wheels and grind corn, and which thus engages the assistance of the moon like a hired hand, to grind, and wind, and pump, and saw, and split stone, and roll iron.

Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves.  That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements.  The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day, and cost us nothing.

Our astronomy is full of examples of calling in the aid of these magnificent helpers.  Thus, on a planet so small as ours, the want of an adequate base for astronomical measurements is early felt, as, for example, in detecting the parallax of a star.  But the astronomer, having by an observation fixed the place of a star, by so simple an expedient as waiting six months, and then repeating his observation, contrived to put the diameter of the earth’s orbit, say two hundred millions of miles, between his first observation and his second, and this line afforded him a respectable base for his triangle.