“The heat and moisture and the principle of vegetable life,” was the reply.
“But how does it grow?” said she. “Can heat and water and seeds make a flower?”
“It is the course of nature, my child,” said the philosopher.
“But I want to know,” said she, “what this course of nature is? I want to know how it operates? Is nature alive? Has it power to make flowers? and by what means does it work?”
“I cannot tell you, child,” was the answer. “We do not understand these things,—we only know the fact that such things are.”
“Well, don’t you believe that the flower grows, father?” said the child.
“Certainly,” was the reply. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I heard you tell Mr. B., the other day, that you never believed anything you could not understand.”
The philosopher here turned the conversation, and they walked on.
A few days after this the child was taken sick of a fever. As she lay upon her bed, she could distinctly feel the beatings of her heart, which shook her whole frame. Her father was by the bedside. Though suffering from disease, the mind of the little girl was perfectly clear.