properties of any one object, or to apply to them any standard of measurement.
But Nature pursues her course of ceaseless change, and while I yet speak of the moment which I sought to detain before me, it is gone, and all is changed; and in like manner, before I had fixed my observation upon it, all was otherwise. It had not always been as it was when I observed it:—it had become so.
Why then, and from what cause, had it become precisely this which I beheld? Why had Nature, amid the infinite variety of possible forms, assumed in this moment precisely these and no others?
For this reason, that they were preceded by those precisely which did precede them, and by no others; and because the present could arise out of those and out of no other possible conditions. Had anything in the preceding moment been in the smallest degree different from what it was, then in the present moment something would have been different from what it is. And from what cause were all things in that preceding moment precisely such as they were? For this reason, that in the moment preceding that, they were such as they were. And this moment again was dependent on its predecessor, and that on another, and so on without limit. In like manner will Nature, in the succeeding moment, be necessarily determined to the particular forms which it will then assume—for this reason, that in the present moment it is determined exactly as it is; and were anything in the present moment in the smallest degree different from what it is, then in the succeeding moment something would necessarily be
