2nd. He speaks also by his visible energies, especially in the moment of love, his colours, his fires, his poisons (many of which are among our therapeutic agents).
3rd. He speaks by his arts, which might fecundate our human inventions.
This is the subject of our second book.
Let us first attack the point where he wounds us most, and seems the auxiliary of death: his immense, ardent, and indefatigable work of destruction. Let us contemplate him in history, and begin at the remotest epoch.
In answer to our littlenesses, our disgusts, our terrors, to the narrow and egotistical judgments which we bring to bear upon such subjects, we must recall the great and necessary reactions of Nature.
It has not advanced with the order of a continuous flood, but with refluxes and recoils back upon itself, which have enabled it to compass a perfect harmony. Our short-sighted survey, frequently arrested by these apparently retrograde movements, grows alarmed, takes fright, and misconceives the character of the whole.
It is peculiar to the Infinite Love, which is continuously creating, to raise every created thing to the Infinite. But in this very infinity, it stimulates a creation of antagonisms which shall reduce the extent of the preceding. If we see it produce monstrous destroyers, be sure that they are destined, as a remedy and a repression, to check some monsters of fecundity.
The herbivorous insects have had the task of keeping under the alarming vegetable accumulations of the primeval world.