Every object possesses its properties in an appointed degree, which it neither exceeds nor falls short of. Not that I am unable to conceive an object hovering between opposite limitations. I am certainly able to do this, for half of my thoughts consist of such. I think of a tree in general, for my thought is undetermined, and does not represent any particular tree, but a tree in general, which has no real existence, for whatever really exists has its appointed number of attributes, and each of those in its appointed measure. Nature, however, hastens on through her everlasting transformations, and while I am speaking of the present moment it is gone and all is changed.
Nature follows undeviating laws.
I find myself in a close chain of phenomena, in which every link depends on that which has preceded it. I see a flower that has sprung out of the earth, and I conclude that a formative power exists in nature. A flower, and precisely this flower, could exist in this place only so far as all circumstances united to make it possible. I am compelled to assume a peculiar original power in nature, and precisely a flower producing power, for another power of nature, under the same circumstances, might have produced some-thing entirely different. Every manifestation of every individual power of nature is connected with all the other powers, for nature is one connected whole.