OF GROWTH IN TREES. 101 



matter again reappears in other forms of life and beauty. 

 It is not the first time that the matter which composes the 

 present living organized creation has been vitalized. How 

 then can this grant! machine of Nature be without guid- 

 ance ? Who will say that there is no plan or system in 

 this thing ? Is it not also plain, that we are connected 

 with the past and future in adamantine chains, and that 

 the species of independency and separation from external 

 nature which we attribute to ourselves is a mere figment ? 

 And if matter is thus imperishable,* then gravity, heat, 

 light, electricity (those forces which control matter), are 

 also eternal. And why should not mind be immortal 

 mind, the highest force in the universe, which now guides 

 the lightnings, and to form and advance which is the de- 

 sign of this vast system of sea and land, air and skies ? It 

 is natural for a noble mind to desire immortality. But if 

 man is not immortal, then in vain a nation weeps for its 

 mighty dead, and erects its noblest cenotaphs. Where 

 will they be when the perpetual beat of ocean shall have 

 shattered to ashes these continents, and the Alps and the 

 Andes, those majestic monuments of Nature, lie entombed 

 under its rolling waters ? Matter and the forces which 

 govern it are eternal, and human life (I mean that life 

 which we Jiave in common with plants), is a mere integralf 



* There is not now and, in the author's opinion, never was, a chaos or 

 state of things in which the atoms of material bodies were heterogeneously 

 disposed. All the researches of science tend to show that matter has al- 

 ways been subject to law. It is not impossible for the matter of our earth 

 to have existed in some other form anterior to its attraction together about 

 the earth's centre, and when the earth shall have answered the purposes of 

 its creation, when she shall grow weary in her diurnal march, and the ocean 

 roll its last billow, the winds breathe their last gasp, may not the matter of 

 the earth, like that of one of the beautiful trees and flowers which have 

 disappeared from its surface, still be in existence, and reappear again in 

 some other form, to beautify the heavens and go through another grand 

 cycle of change ? 



f Integral, the sum of a series of differentials or infinitely small quanti- 

 ties. The moments of human life are its differentials, and human life itself 

 is their sum or integral. 



