tant {20} run. In so universal a calamity (if Death be one)
private complaints cannot be heard: with so many royal palaces, it is
no loss to see thy poor cabin burn. Shall the heavens stay their
ever-rolling wheels (for what is the motion of them but the motion of a
swift and ever-whirling wheel, which twineth forth and again uprolleth
our life), and hold still time to prolong thy miserable days, as if the
highest of their working were to do homage unto thee? Thy death is a
pace of the order of this _All_, a part of the life of this world; for
while the world is the world, some creatures must die, and others take
life. Eternal things are raised far above this sphere of generation
and corruption, where the first matter, like an ever flowing and ebbing
sea, with divers waves, but the same water, keepeth a restless and
never tiring current; what is below in the universality of the kind,
not in itself doth abide: _Man_ a long line of years hath continued,
_This man_ every hundred is swept away. This globe environed with air
is the sole region of Death, the grave where everything that taketh
life must rot, the stage of fortune and change, only glorious in the
inconstancy and varying alterations of it, which though many, seem yet
to abide one, and being a certain entire one, are ever many. The never
agreeing bodies of the elemental brethren turn one into another; the
earth changeth her countenance with the seasons, sometimes looking cold
and naked, other times hot and flowery: nay, I cannot tell how, but
even the lowest of those celestial bodies, that mother of months, and
empress of seas and moisture, as if she were a mirror of our constant
mutability, appeareth (by her too great nearness {21} unto us) to
participate of our changes, never seeing us twice with that same face:
now looking black, then pale and wan, sometimes again in the perfection
and fulness of her beauty shining over us. Death no less than life
doth here act a part, the taking away of what is old being the making
way for what is young.

(_A Cypress Grove_.)

THOMAS HOBBES 1588-1679

PRIMITIVE LIFE

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is
enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time, wherein men
live without other security, than what their own strength and their own
invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no
place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and
cons