APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 103 



the process of life presents the same appearance of 

 cyclical evolution. Nay, we have but to cast our 

 eyes over the rest of the world and cyclical change 

 presents itself on all sides. It meets us in the water 

 that flows to the sea and returns to the springs ; in 

 the heavenly bodies that wax and wane, go and 

 return to their places ; in the inexorable sequence of 

 the ages of man's life ; in that successive rise, 

 apogee, and fall of dynasties and of states which 

 is the most prominent topic of civil history. 



As no man fording a swift stream can dip his foot 

 twice into the same water, so no man can, with 

 exactness, affirm of anything in the sensible world 

 that it is. As he utters the words, nay, as he thinks 

 them, the predicate ceases to be applicable ; the 

 present has become the past; the "is" should be 

 "was." And the more we learn of the nature of 

 things, the more evident is it that what we call rest 

 is only unperceived activity ; that seeming peace is 

 silent but strenuous battle. In every part, at every 

 moment, the state of the cosmos is the expression of 

 a transitory adjustment of contending forces ; a 

 scene of strife, in which all the combatants fall in 

 turn. What is true of each part is true of the 

 whole. Natural knowledge tends more and more to 

 the conclusion that "all the choir of heaven and 

 furniture of the earth " are the transitory forms of 

 parcels of cosmic substance wending along the road of 

 evolution, from nebulous potentiality, through end- 

 less growths of sun and planet and satellite ; 

 through all varieties of matter; through infinite 

 diversities of life and thought ; possibly, through 

 modes of being of which we neither have a concep- 

 tion, nor are competent to form any, back to the 

 indefinable latency from which they arose. Thus 



