oil with which it refused to mix, 



200 Hypatia 

the lime loved the acid which it eagerly received 
into itself, and, like a lover, grew warm with 
the  of . Why not? What right 
had we to deny , , to them, any 
more than to ourselves? Was not the same uni- 
versal  stirring in them as in us? And was 
it not by virtue of that  that we thought, 
and felt, and loved? Then why not they, as 
well as we? If the one  permeated all 
, if its all-energizing presence linked the 
flower with the crystal as well as with the demon 
and the god, must it not link together also the 
two extremes of the great chain of being? bind 
even the nameless One itself to the smallest 
creature which bore its creative impress? What 
greater miracle in the attraction of a god or 
an angel, by material incense, symbols, and spells, 
than in the attraction of one  to another 
by the material sounds of the human voice? 
Was the affinity between  and matter im- 
plied in that, more miraculous than the affinity 
between the  and the body? than the re- 
tention of that  within that body by the 
breathing of material air, the eating of material 
food ? Or even, if the physicists were right,