animal existence! What a succession of flora and fauna! What generations
of marine organisms in forming the strata of sediment! What generations
of plans in forming the deposits of coal! What transformations of
climate to drive the pachydermata away from the pole!--And now comes
Man, the latest of all, he is like the uppermost bud on the top of a
tall ancient tree, flourishing there for a while, but, like the tree,
destined to perish after a few seasons, when the increasing and foretold
congelation allowing the tree to live shall force the tree to die. He is
not alone on the branch; beneath him, around him, on a level with him,
other buds shoot forth, born of the same sap; but he must not forget, if
he would comprehend his own being, that, along with himself, other lives
exist in his vicinity, graduated up to him and issuing from the same
trunk. If he is unique he is not isolated, being an animal among other
animals;[3113] in him and with them, substance, organization and birth,
the formation and renewal of the functions, senses and appetites,
are similar, while his superior intelligence, like their rudimentary
intelligence, has for an indispensable organ a nervous matter whose
structure is the same with him as with them.--Thus surrounded, brought
forth and borne along by nature, is it to be supposed that in nature he
is an empire within an empire? He is there as the part of a whole, by
virtue of being a physical body, a chemical composition, an animated
organism, a sociable animal, among other bodies, other compositions,
other social animals, all analogous to him; and by virtue of these
classifications, he is, like them, subject to laws.--For, if the first
cause is unknown to us, and we dispute among ourselves to know what it
is, whether innate or external, we affirm with certainty the mode of its
action, and that it operates only according to fixed and general
laws. Every circumstance, whatever it may be, is conditioned, and, its
conditions being given, it never fails to conform to them. Of two links
forming a chain, the first always draws on the second. There are laws:

* for numbers, forms, and motions,

* for the revolution of the planets and the fall of bodies,

* for the diffusion of light and the radiation of heat,

* for the attractions and repulsion of electricity,

* for chemical combinations, and

* for the birth, equilibrium and dissolution of organic bodies.

They exist for the birth, maintenance, an