Perhaps, when we contemplate the tireless labour of the bees and ants as they run here and there, and reinforce one another in an endless series of the same acts, with apparently their sole purpose in the next generation--perhaps a dismal weariness steals over us at the sight of such everlasting monotony of labour, and at a feeling that their futile efforts much resemble our own; but we may legitimately remind ourselves that our ignorance of the complete scheme of things inhibits or at least vitiates our judgment; also that the chain of succession, from father to son in an endless series stretching away to infinity, is Nature's first law. Just as nothing isolated happens in nature, so nothing exists which is isolated or peculiar. What we call our individuality is only a congeries of cells: just as what we call an adventure is a complex of events tending towards a single defined end. It would be wrong for us to pick out and treat of any single one of the tribulations of the pine-seed on its described huge journey, except in relation to the result of the history, the mighty tree towering like a red pillar four hundred feet into the air. Likewise with our storied lives. We will find nothing irregular in them if we realize that they existed before they became patent, and that our minds became aware of them only when they developed in some apparently fresh phase to which we were peculiarly sensitive. A good example is the ray of light which left a star centuries ago, but which we notice only as it enters our limited field of vision. The least important event has a history going back far beyond our mind's reach: we cannot fix the start of any thing, or of any creature, or of any circumstance. This enormous tree, whose shadow falls across my book, and whose history we are tracing ... what began it? How did the class of giant pine arise? The most evanescent happening carries back through adventure upon adventure to infinity, and if we could trace back everything to its first cause, probably we would be astonished to find small consequences to things which we think magnificent, and would find that our grandest created things took their rise in ordinary and insignificant circumstances. We may lawfully presume that the past has been universal, and that the future will be the same; for probably everything happened in the eternity which preceded us, and everything will certainly happen in the limitless time which will succeed our paltry moments. Where do we come from? What was our first shape? Academic questions these, perhaps of no great urgency, but none the less difficult for us to picture. We feel distinctly enough what is good or bad in our experiences of the moment; yet we cannot in the least evade our destinies; and our impotence supplies us with a reason for casting out despair, and accepting with dignity what fate offers.