20 The Bible of Nature 



Where's wood and sea and shepherd's play? 



They pondered not my question o'er, 



But cried: 'So was it long before, 



And will go on forevermore.' 



And when five hundred years are gone 



I'll go the same way as anon." 1 



Persistence amid Change. But in spite of all this 

 ceaseless flux there is steadiness and persistence. 

 The most familiar instance is the living body, 

 which is continually changing in whirlpool-like 

 fashion and yet remains very much the same 

 year in, year out. From one point of view vital 

 activity is in great part a process of combustion 

 often very intense yet not less remarkable 

 than the ceaseless change is the retention of in- 

 tegrity. 



1 Quoted from J. T. Merz's " History of European 

 Thought in the Nineteenth Century," Vol. II, p. 289. 



Goethe summed up the Heraclitian doctrine of uni- 

 versal flux in his well-known poem "Bins und Alles." 

 "Und umzuschaffen das Geschaffne, 

 Damit sich's nicht zum Starren waffne, 

 Wirkt ewiges, lebendiges Thun. 

 Und was nicht war, nun will es werden, 

 Zu reinen Sonnen, farbigen Erden, 

 In keinem Falle darf es ruhn. 



Es soil sich regen, schaffend handeln, 

 Erst sich gestalten, dann verwandeln, 

 Nur scheinbar steht's Momente still, 

 Das Ewige regt sich fort in alien; 

 Denn alles muss in Nichts zerfallen, 

 Wenn es im Sein beharren will." 



