32 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEATES. 



Thus, in reality, there is no death, and that which we regard as the 

 cessation of existence, and which the browning of the leaf teaches us 

 with shame and weeping, is only one of many changes, through which 

 all the types must pass as they fulfil the universal law which requires 

 them to grow, to grow. And because man has all the faculties of all 

 the creatures combined, together with a will which allows of no limit 

 to its choice, a mind which knows no limit to its power, death is still 

 less a truth to him, who can transmit the faculties of the inward as 

 well as the outward life, and perpetuate, even in dying, the chain of 

 circumstances through which he has already passed. This civilizing, 

 railroad-building, freedom-loving race of beautiful souls, are only the 

 fruits which hang on the branches of the tree of human history, and 

 which, in their turn, become the food of generations which are to fol- 

 low them. Each man lives to enjoy that which past ages of suffering 

 and trial have procured for him, and suffers in his turn that the next 

 may derive happiness from his scars and trials. Thus all the aims of 

 all the ages are locked in this, and each individual man carries within 

 him the germs of an infinite progression. 



But this will which wars with instinct, which draws him from the 

 wood where he had learnt to worship, and thrusts him into the city 

 where he may learn to swear, is also a thing of nature, a part of the 

 being which claims its possession ; and if now acting in opposition to 

 his aboriginal impulses, and impelling him to deeds which his moments 

 of high sanity — when instinct alone speaks — proclaim false to his na- 

 ture as a whole, acts thus only that it may one day harmonise with 

 his whole life and become the helpmate of his higliest gifts and powers. 

 In the child, where instinct acts almost alone, the aims are pure, and 

 there is no food for contrition ; in the man, where the will is para- 

 mount, and the instinct but a secondary trait, the soul is covered with 

 blots, and embittered with infinite compunctions. Therefore, for the 

 soul which dwells witliin this clay, the ages have all passed as succes- 

 sive generations of leaves, the browning and falling of which, were 

 necessary to the perfection of the type running through and surviving 

 them ; and for the purposes of this day and hour, the brown leaves 

 of the human life, the perishing purposes of the human spirit, exist 

 but as materials for that future juvenescence, when the will and the 

 intellect shall act together. 



The history of man, no less than the history of nature, teaches this 

 lesson of evolution. Wrapped up in the oval bud of spring are the 



