But it is of prime importance to observe that the aforementioned mature fruit, which so falls at the tenderest touch into the hand, is no sudden, no idle product.  It comes, on the contrary, of a depth of operation more profound, and testifies to a genius and sincerity in Nature more subtile and religious, than we can understand or imagine.  This apple that in fancy we now pluck, and hardly need to pluck, from the burdened bough,—­think what a pedigree it has, what aeons of world-making and world-maturing must elapse, all the genius of God divinely assiduous, ere this could hang in ruddy and golden ripeness here!  Think, too, what a concurrence and consent of elements, of sun and soil, of ocean-vapors and laden winds, of misty heats in the torrid zone and condensing blasts from the North, were required before a single apple could grow, before a single blossom could put forth its promise, tender and beautiful amidst the gladness of spring!—­and besides these consenting ministries of Nature, how the special genius of the tree must have wrought, making sacrifice of woody growth, and, by marvellous and ineffable alchemies, co-working with the earth beneath, and the heaven above!  Ah, not from any indifference, not from any haste or indolence, in Nature, come the fruits of her seasons and her centuries!

Now he who has any faculty of thinking must see that thoughts are before things in the order of existence.  True it is, that here as elsewhere, as everywhere, last is first and first is last.  That which is innermost, and consequently primary, is last to appear on the surface; and accordingly thoughts per se follow things in the order of manifestation.  But how could the thing exist, but for a thought that preceded and begot it?  And now that the thought has passed through the material symbol, has passed forward to a new and more consummate expression, first in the soul, and afterwards by the voice, we should be unwise indeed to deny or forget its antiquity.  Thoughts are no parvenus or novi homines in Nature, but came in with that Duke William who first struck across the unnamed seas into this island of time and material existence which we inhabit.  Accordingly, it is using extreme understatement, to say that every pure original thought has a genesis equally ancient, earnest, vital with any product in Nature,—­has present relationships no less broad and cosmical, and an evolution implying the like industries, veritable and precious beyond all scope of affirmation.  Even if we quite overlook its pre-personal ancestry, still the roots it has in its immediate author will be of unmeasured depth, and it will still proceed toward its consummate form by energies and assiduities that beggar the estimation of all ordinary toil.  With the birth of the man himself was it first born, and to the time of its perfect growth and birth into speech the burden of it was borne by every ruddy drop of his heart’s blood, by every vigor of his body,—­nerve