“Time and space relations vanish as laws are known.”—­“The moral law lies at the centre of Nature and radiates to the circumference.”—­“All things with which we deal preach to us.  What is a farm but a mute gospel?”—­“From the child’s successive possession of his several senses up to the hour when he sayeth, ’Thy will be done!’ he is learning the secret that he can reduce under his will, not only particular events, but great classes, nay, the whole series of events, and so conform all facts to his character.”

The unity in variety which meets us everywhere is again referred to.  He alludes to the ministry of our friendships to our education.  When a friend has done for our education in the way of filling our minds with sweet and solid wisdom “it is a sign to us that his office is closing, and he is commonly withdrawn from our sight in a short time.”  This thought was probably suggested by the death of his brother Charles, which occurred a few months before “Nature” was published.  He had already spoken in the first chapter of this little book as if from some recent experience of his own, doubtless the same bereavement.  “To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it.  Then there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend.  The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.”  This was the first effect of the loss; but after a time he recognizes a superintending power which orders events for us in wisdom which we could not see at first.

The chapter on Idealism must be read by all who believe themselves capable of abstract thought, if they would not fall under the judgment of Turgot, which Emerson quotes:  “He that has never doubted the existence of matter may be assured he has no aptitude for metaphysical inquiries.”  The most essential statement is this:—­

“It is a sufficient account of that Appearance we call the World, that God will teach a human mind, and so makes it the receiver of a certain number of congruent sensations, which we call sun and moon, man and woman, house and trade.  In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions they make on me correspond with outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether Orion is up there in Heaven, or some god paints the image in the firmament of the Soul?”

We need not follow the thought through the argument from illusions, like that when we look at the shore from a moving ship, and others which cheat the senses by false appearances.