different from what it will be. And in the moment following that, all things will be precisely as they will be, because in the immediately previous moment they will be as they will be; and so will its successor proceed forth from it, and another from that, and so on for ever.
Nature proceeds throughout the whole infinite series of her possible determinations without outward incentive; and the succession of these changes is not arbitrary, but follows strict and unalterable laws. Whatever exists in Nature, necessarily exists as it does exist, and it is absolutely impossible that it could be otherwise. I enter within an unbroken chain of phenomena, in which every link is determined by that which has preceded it, and in its turn determines the next; so that, were I able to trace backward the causes through which alone any given moment could have come into actual existence, and to follow out the consequences which must necessarily flow from it, I should then be able, at that moment, and by means of thought alone, to discover all possible conditions of the universe, both past and future;—past, by interpreting the given moment; future, by foreseeing its results. Every part contains the whole, for only through the whole is each part what it is, but through the whole it is necessarily what it is.
What is it then which I have thus discovered? If I review my acquisitions as a whole, I find their substance to be this:—that in every stage of progress an antecedent is necessarily supposed, from which and through which alone the present has arisen; in every condition
