4 TRANSITORY NATURE OF ORGANIZED COMBINATIONS. 



eclipses of the sun, the transitory visits of comets. On our own earth we also witness 

 oceanic tides which ebb and flow, and spring and summer, and autumn and winter, 

 following each other unceasingly. From year to year we witness the alternate in- 

 crease and shortening of the day, the tempests of the equinoxes, and the sultry weather 

 of midsummer. In the world of organization which is around us, we observe similar 

 mutations : there are plants which come up in spring, and die away in autumn ; and 

 even those hardier races which witness the changing of empires, give tokens that they 

 are included within this law of variation. The oak unfolds its buds into leaves, which 

 periodically fall to the ground. Among sensitive beings, from time to time, different 

 races of animals have held dominion of the earth : at one period it has been almost the 

 exclusive abode of reptiles, at another of four-footed mammalians, and at last is under 

 the control of two-handed man. 



10. In whatever direction, therefore, we look, we perceive the transitory nature of 

 all things : even with those which, from their magnitude, their remoteness, or their im- 

 portance, might with apparent propriety be regarded as not participating in these un- 

 ceasing changes, the law holds good. Throughout the universe there is no monument 

 that retains its primordial condition. 



11. Each one of tliese various changes, no matter whether it concerns organic or 

 inorganic nature, has been the result of the action of some determining cause. The 

 countless systems of phenomena which have arisen are all connected together as sys- 

 tems of effects. In a web, as it passes from the loom, the different threads interlace 

 with one another, and though we soon cease to identify each as it pursues its sinuous 

 way, we know that the last is connected with the first; and in the web of nature each 

 event has been brought into relation with others that have gone before it, and others 

 that have succeeded it, and all are intertwined together as a series of causes and effects. 



12. Understanding thus that no effect takes place except by the operation of some 

 prior cause, we occupy ourselves in discovering its dependances on things that have 

 preceded it. It is this which engages the contemplation of the greatest philosophers in 

 their speculations on natural phenomena, and ordinary men in the daily affairs of life. 

 The disasters of to-day we attribute to the errors of yesterday, and the possession of 

 glory, and wealth, and position in society, to plans that have been conducted well. No 

 man is in heart a fatalist, for each one clearly perceives that his destinies are in his 

 own charge ; and no small portion of human happiness or misery springs from a knowl- 

 edge of these things. In other tribes of life, where intellectual processes are replaced 

 by processes of instinct, it is very different : the wild animal which lives in the prairies 

 meets seasons of famine and distress without a moan. Careless for to-morrow, he 

 bears up with his present lot, and is utterly unconscious that he may have been the 

 author of his own wo. There is with him no recording memory of whence he came, 

 no distracting care of whither he may go. He acts, in respect of the passing time, in 

 the same way that men act in respect of their whole life ; they are ignorant of what 

 happened in their early days of infancy, and never trouble themselves about what may 

 come in old age. 



13. The vegetable world, from possessing no nervous system, is inherently incapable 



