VII THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS THESE rules were writ in human heart By Him who built the day; The columns of the universe Not firmer based than they. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS SINCE INCE the discovery of Oersted that gal vanism and electricity and magnetism are only forms of one and the same force, and convertible each into the other, we have continually suggested to us a larger generalization: that each of the great departments of Naturechemistry, vegetation, the animal life exhibits the same laws on a different plane; that the intellectual and moral worlds are analogous to the material. There is a kind of latent omniscience not only in every man, but in every particle. That convertibility we so admire in plants and animal structures, whereby the repairs and the ulterior uses are subserved, when one part is wounded or deficient, by another; this selfhelp and self-creation proceed from the same original power which works remotely in grandest and meanest structures by the same design,— works in a lobster or a mite-worm as a wise man would if imprisoned in that poor form. 'Tis the effort of God, of the Supreme Intellect, in the extremest frontier of his universe. As this unity exists in the organization of |