Natural law in the spiritual world / by Henry Drummond.

  • Henry Drummond
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural law in the spiritual world / by Henry Drummond. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    also, is a vast assemblage of small glassy or por- cellanous objects built up into curious forms. The material, chemically, remains the same, but the angles of pyramid and prism have given place to curved lines, so that the contour is entirely different. The appearance is that of a vast collection of mi- croscopic urns, goblets, and vases, each richly orna- mented with small sculptured discs or perforations which are disposed over the pure white surface in regular belts and rows. Each tiny urn is chiselled into the most faultless proportion, and the whole presents a vision of magic beauty. Judged by the standard of their loveliness there is little to choose between these two sets of objects. Yet there is one cardinal difference between them. They belong to different worlds. The last belong to the living world, the former to the dead. The first are crystals, the last are shells. No power on earth can make these little urns of the Polycystince except Life. We can melt them down in the laboratory, but no ingenuity of chem- istry can reproduce their sculptured forms. We are sure that Life has formed them, however, for tiny creatures allied to those which made the Barbadoes’ earth are living still, fashioning their fairy palaces of flint in the same mysterious way. On the other hand, chemistry has no difficulty in making these