RUJUVENESCENCE IN NATURE. 13 



naturalist this dissolution would tend merely to indicate 

 the proximity of the transition to a new, upgrowing time 

 which will seize the Positive, in all fields, more pro- 

 foundly, and give it a more perfect shape. Will this 

 hope be fulfilled? Has not Old Europe rather arrived 

 at a hoary age, and an approach to its dissolution? 

 The answer to this must be written first of all in our 

 own hearts ; but if you would seek it externally, look 

 vnth the eye of the naturalist into the hidden workshops 

 of the future, and you will find an infinite abundance of 

 germs and buds, which bear the promise of a rich future 

 within them ; you will above all find them in the domain 

 of Science, as the highest region of mental development, 

 from which alone the latest reformations of life can and 

 ought to issue. But these are digressions leading us too 

 widely from the purpose of the foregoing considerations. 

 If however it be true that all the domains of life are parts 

 of a great total development ; if it be true that every de- 

 partment of science leads in its more profound establish- 

 ment to the same eternal idea, which is the foundation of 

 all reality and all truth, — each department must be 

 mirrored in the others, and thus the naturalist may be 

 permitted to contemplate each movement of the human 

 life which surrounds him, in the mirror of Nature j to 

 find in whose lawfully connected government, the key to 

 calm judgment, is often his gain and payment. 



In the preceding observations we have sought to regard 

 the phenomenon of Rejuvenescence in its general, exter- 

 nal mode of appearance, and to mark out the wide field 

 in which it is repeated in such a multifold and yet es- 

 sentially always the same way. A profound investigation 

 into the nature of Rejuvenescence would pre-require 

 somewhat minute research into the essence of age and 

 youth. A few more remarks upon youth may be per- 

 mitted here. According as we regard life as a mere 

 result of external causes, or discover its basis in one 

 original internal endowment, will youth appear to us, in 

 the one case as poverty, want, and crudity, in the other 



