xxvn NATURES RIDDLES 301 



only examine it carefully, made up of contrarieties ? 

 Why is it that the sun should be always blazing 

 hot in Leo, scorching the ground with his fierce 

 glow, while in Aquarius he brings winter s chain 

 and closes the rivers with ice ? The one con 

 stellation is subject to the same law as the other, 

 though its characteristics and influence are so 

 different. Aries again rises in a moment, Libra 

 lifts its scales very slowly ; yet the one sign is of 

 the same nature as the other, though that one 

 mounts in a brief space, this comes forth very 

 deliberately. Do you not see, too, how contrary 

 the elements are to one another ? They are heavy 3 

 and light, cold and hot, moist and dry. The whole 

 concord of the universe is a harmony of discords. 

 You say a comet is not a star, because its form does 

 not correspond to the type, but is unlike other stars. 

 You can see, no doubt, how very like that star that 

 returns to its place after thirty years is to this which 

 revisits its haunt within the year ! Nature does 

 not turn out her work according to a single pattern ; 

 she prides herself upon her power of variation. She 4 

 has made some things larger, some swifter than 

 others ; some stronger, some more limited in power ; 

 some she has separated from the crowd, that their 

 splendid isolation might render their progress con 

 spicuous ; some she has consigned to a place in 

 the common herd. He has little conception of 

 nature s power who thinks that she may not do 

 exceptionally what she does not do repeatedly. 

 She does not often display comets ; she has assigned 

 them a different place, different periods from the 

 other stars, and motions unlike theirs. She wished 

 to enhance the greatness of her work by these 

 strange visitants whose form is too beautiful to be 



