Genre:

Extract, Letter

Publications extracted:

Robert Burns

Subjects:

Botany, Ornithology, Feeling, Machinery, Natural Theology, Immaterialism, Immortality

    Burns relates that certain flowers and birds evoke strong feelings in him. Observes: 'Are we are a piece of machinery, which, like the Æolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clay? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities—a God that made all things—man's immaterial and immortal nature—and a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave' (327).