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Show 342 CHANGES BY TIME. germes of plants or of animals, till we find them de \ veloped in visible and tangible embryos, we must not make our ignorance the measure of nature's working; for though we have seen them ~om~ only in one way, and, generally speaking, pensh m another, we are not to suppose that that is all. When forests of one kind of timber are cut down, ne~ plants make their appearance ; and there are evidences that races, both of plants and of an~mals, have perished even in our own country, w1th<:>ut any rrreat convulsion of nature, for theu 1·emams have been left on the strand, and buried by the slow prorrress of the depositation of the matt~r washed do;n by the rains and stayed by the reactiOn of the waves. d . . Cultivation itself will deteriorate an In time destroy races, if the same race, and the same mode of culture be pursued amid ge_neral change. Our own times are times of very rapid change, and~ upon the whole, of improvement; we dar~ not, without the certainty of their falling off, contmue the same stock and the same seed-corn, season after season, and age after age, as was done by our forefathers. The general change of the country~ust have c~ ange, and not mere succession, in that which we cult~vate ; and thus we must cross the breeds of our ammals, and remove the seeds and plants of our vegetables from district to district. . . There is something of the same kmd m human beings, and we have reason to ex~ect that. there should ; because, in as far as man IS . matenal and mortal he is just as dependent upon circumstances as any' other material production. Hence we ?nd that when a town or a district is busy and b~1sthng, and strangers resort to it, both the populatiOn ~nd the energy increase far faster than the numencal addition ~f strangers. But, on the other hand, wh?n it becomes dull, and strang~rs cea~e to resort to It, ,t dies away, both in populat10n and m mental energy, J ) ~ • ) J ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ~ ) ) ) TI{U~ W1UDY. ,, ; ~ ,, , ) ,, , ,) even though none of t.}le people leave it. Thus it is • not leisure that rnallkind .ne~qs, it is stirqulp~ and • activity; and stady, eveJ tl e: (lc;;t -oto~ iutd •'and abstruse study, 1fhr ives b t.te .in he fu ~ ffialches of time which the busy man can spare for it than in all the listless and loitering days of him ~ho has nothing to do. That is as true of the study of the productions and phenomena of nature, as it is of those sciences which are more immediately the tools of art. [But these are the tools ; nature furnishes the material5 which are of primary importance.] And there ar~ many advantages. Nature is always at hand; our own senses are all the apparatus that we need; and w~ have only to look at the connexion in which any ~hu?-g or apl?e.ara~ce that we oJ;>serve is placed, both m JUXtapositiOn m space and m succession in time ~n order to get a lesson from every thing that come~ m our way. Could the whole people, according to their opportunities, bring themselves to do that upon all occasions, the extent, the correctness, the usefulness of the knowledge that must be obtained would be immense. As they would have no hypothesis of a school ?r dogma of a sect to support, each would commumcate the result of his own ex~ 1 perience to the general store, and receive that of his fellows in ret~rn ; and error "Yould be exploded, and ~o. would s1lly . and deceptive credulity, and skepticism equally silly and deceptive ; for all men would see with their own eyes, and believe from their own understanding; and the heavens and the earth, in all their fairness and in all their fulness, would be every man's kingdom. That is a consum~ rnation to which it is perhaps hopeless to look: but every approach which can be made to it is an addition to the happiness of man, and to the rational and true adoration and glory of man's Almighty Maker. THE END. .... ..... · . .. ... .. . |
