TIME AND CHANGE 
of the water of a stream, yet what is left flows on 
and keeps up the continuity and identity of the 
stream; dip your cup into it here, and you will not 
get precisely the same water you would have got 
had none of it been diverted or used far back in its 
course — you get the water that was allowed to 
flow by. 
Had there been no loss of life by war and _pesti- 
lence and accidents of various kinds, the different 
countries would have been occupied by quite other 
men and women than those that fill them to-day. 
The course of life in every neighborhood is changed 
by what seem like accidental causes, as when a fam- 
ily is practically wiped out by some accident or dread 
disease. This brings new people on the scene. The 
farm or the business falls into other hands, and new 
social relations spring up, new men and women are 
brought together or the old ones driven apart, mar- 
riage is hastened or retarded, opportunities for fam- 
ily life are made or unmade, and fewer children, or 
more children, as the case may be, are the result. 
The issue of some battle hundreds or thousands of 
years ago may have played a part in your life and 
mine to-day — other races, other individuals of the 
race, would have been thrown together had the issue 
been different, and other families started, so that 
some one else would have been here in our stead. 
But the question of hazard to the race of man in 
geologic time is quite a different one. Here our fate 
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