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164
Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore
·
Charles Kingsley
85
“Playing
such
fantastic
tricks
before
high
heaven,
As
make
the
angels
weep.”
Yes;
it
is
this
vision
of
the
awful
permanence
and
perfection
of
the
natural
world,
beside
the
wild
flux
and
confusion,
the
mad
struggles,
the
despairing
cries
of
the
world
of
spirits
which
man
has
defiled
by
sin,
which
would
at
moments
crush
the
naturalist’s
heart,
and
make
his
brain
swim
with
terror,
were
it
not
that
he
can
see
by
faith,
through
all
the
abysses
and
the
ages,
not
merely
“Hands,
From
out
the
darkness,
shaping
man;”
but
above
them
a
living
loving
countenance,
human
and
yet
Divine;
and
can
hear
a
voice
which
said
at
first,
“Let
us
make
man
in
our
image;”
and
hath
said
since
then,
and
says
for
ever
and
for
ever,
“Lo,
I
am
with
you
alway,
even
to
the
end
of
the
world.”
But
now,
friend,
who
listenest,
perhaps
instructed,
and
at
least
amused—
if,
as
Professor
Harvey
well
says,
the
simpler
animals
represent,
as
in
a
glass,
the
scattered
organs
of
the
higher
races,
which
of
your
organs
is
represented
by
that
“sca’d
man’s
head,”
which
the
Devon
children
more
gracefully,
yet
with
less
adherence
to
plain
likeness,
call
“mermaid’s
head,”
{126a}
which
we
picked
up
just
now
on
Paignton
Sands?
Or
which,
again,
by
its
more
beautiful
little
congener,
{126b}
five
or
six
of
which
are
adhering
tightly
to
the
slab
before
us,
a
ball
covered
with
delicate
spines
of
lilac
and
green,
and
stuck
over
(cunning
fellows!)
with
stripes
of
dead
sea-weed
to
serve
as
improvised
parasols?
One
cannot
say
that
in
him
we
have
the
first
type
of
the
human
skull:
for
the
resemblance,
quaint
as
it
is,
is
only
sensuous
and
accidental,
(in
the
logical
use
of
that
term,)
and
not
homological,
i.e.
a
lower
manifestation
of
the
same
idea.
Yet
how
is
one
tempted
to
say,
that
this
was
Nature’s
first
and
lowest
attempt
at
that
use
of
hollow
globes
of
mineral
for
protecting
soft
fleshy
parts,
which
she
afterwards
developed
to
such
perfection
in
the
skulls
of
vertebrate
animals!
But
even
that
conceit,
pretty
as
it
sounds,
will
not
hold
good;
for
though
Radiates
similar
to
these
were
among
the
earliest
tenants
of
the
abyss,
yet
as
early
as
their
time,
perhaps
even
before
them,
had
been
conceived
and
actualized,
in
the
sharks,
and
in
Mr.
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