io SCIENCE PRIMERS. [NATURE AND 



objects, and discovering how to turn the properties 

 and the powers of things and the connections of cause 

 and effect among them to our own advantage. 



7. Many Objects and Chains of Causes and 

 Effects in Nature are out of our reach. 



Among natural objects, as we have seen, there 

 are some that we can get hold of and turn to 

 account. But all the greatest things in nature and the 

 links of cause and effect which connect them, are 

 utterly beyond our reach. The sun rkes and sets ; 

 the moon and the stars move through the sky ; fine 

 weather and storms, cold and heat, alternate. The 

 sea changes from violent disturbance to glassy calm, 

 as the winds sweep over it with varying strength or 

 die away; innumerable plants and animals come in 

 being and vanish again, without our being able to exert 

 the slightest influence on the majestic procession of the 

 series of great natural events. Hurricanes ravage one 

 spot ; earthquakes destroy another ; volcanic eruptions 

 lay waste a third. A- fine season scatters wealth and 

 abundance here, and a long drought brings pestilence 

 and famine there. In. all such cases, the direct 

 influence of man avails him nothing ; and, so long 

 as he is ignorant, he is the mere sport of the greater 

 powers of nature. 



8. The Order of Nature : nothing happens 

 by Accident, and there is no such thing as 

 Chance. 



But the first thing that men learned, as soon as 

 they began .to study nature carefully, was that some 

 events take place in regular order and that some causes 



