462 Pleasant Ways in Science. 



of a great mass of water, wliicli every time comes from the 

 same enormous height, and always encounters the same 

 obstacles. The dispersion of the drops, the foam, the sound 

 occasioned by the fall, as well as by the roaring and foaming 

 of the water, which always arise from the same causes, ever 

 remain the same. In the impression which all these things 

 produce upon us we feel a variety, but at the same time a 

 totality ; or, in other words, we feel the variety of the single 

 impressions as the effect of one great action of nature pro- 

 duced by the peculiar conditions of the locality. Perhaps the 

 invariable in this phenomenon might be termed the thought of 

 Nature inherent in it."* 



It is the peculiar function of organic nature to exhibit a 

 higher kind of identity amid change, and the quantity of 

 regulated and co-ordinated motion that takes place in an 

 organism is a measure of its perfection and importance. The 

 animal stands higher than the tree, and its various processes 

 of growth and action are dependent upon or associated with 

 the putting together and the taking to pieces of more com- 

 plicated substances than those which constitute the great bulk 

 of the plant. The muscular system of animals exhibits a 

 complexity of chemical formation corresponding with its 

 elaborate arrangement of parts. The nervous system of 

 animals is remarkable for its chemical complexity ; and no 

 thought, feeling, or volition occurs in a living body, without a 

 multitude of atoms undergoing oscillation and changes of place. 



If we consider our globe as an individual orb, we trace 

 again the co-existence of identity and change. In one sense, 

 it is certainly the same globe as that on which the Mastodon 

 trod with monster step — the same as that across the fields 

 and lakes of which the Pterodactyl, or great flying lizard, 

 stretched his dragon-wing — the same as that over whose 

 morasses gigantic ferns waved their branches at one pei-iod — 

 and in whose seas, in a remoter age, the so-called Eozoon 

 built his complicated house. Nay, we may go further back, 

 and accepting as probable the nebular hypothesis, we find it 

 the same globe as that molten ball which, resulted from the 

 condensation of those thin and subtle ^ases that were the 

 physical progenitors of all the structures it now contains. 

 Whatever name it bore amongst the immortals, by that same 

 name, bearing testimony to its identity, it may be known 

 through all the ages of future and of ceaseless change. Its 

 destiny may be to pass through modes of existence as different 



* We quote this passage from Bohn's edition of the translation made by 

 Leonora and Joanna Horner. We Lave omitted the word " superficial/)/," which 

 in ttie translation precedes "termed," as it can scarcely, in its ordinary accep- 

 tation, express Oersted's meaning. 



