150 RANTS UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



His works, who combined with the deepest insight into 

 the excellence of nature the greatest reverence for the 

 revelation of the Divine omnipotence, saw himself com- 

 pelled to predict the decay of nature by the natural 

 tendency which the mechanics of motion has to it. If a 

 Systematic Constitution, by the inherent consequence of 

 its perishableness through great periods, brings even the 

 very smallest part which can be imagined nigh to the state 

 of disorder, there must be a moment in the infinite course 

 of eternity at which this gradual diminution will have ex- 

 hausted all motion. 



But we ought not to lament the perishing of a world 

 as a real loss of Nature. She proves her riches by a sort 

 of prodigality which, while certain parts pay their tribute 

 to mortality, maintains itself unimpaired by numberless new 

 generations in the whole range of its perfection. What an 

 innumerable multitude of flowers and insects are destroyed 

 by a single cold day ! And how little are they missed, 

 although they are glorious products of the art of nature 

 and demonstrations of the Divine Omnipotence ! In 

 another place, however, this loss is again compensated for to 

 superabundance. Man who seems to be the masterpiece of 

 the creation, is himself not excepted from this law. Nature 

 proves that she is quite as rich and quite as inexhaustible 

 in the production of what is most excellent among the 

 creatures, as of what is most trivial, and that even their 

 destruction is a necessary shading amid the multiplicity of 

 her suns, because their production costs her nothing. The 

 injurious influences of infected air, earthquakes, and in- 

 undations sweep whole peoples from the earth; but it does 

 not appear that nature has thereby suffered any damage. 

 In the same way whole worlds and systems quit the stage 



