It is a grave thought that in this indescribable whole the separate items of activity undergo an identical evolutionary process. When the sky was blue, in the piercing sunlight of a fragrant summer-time, the forest giant attained its highest pitch, as its branches were rich and supple with sap. Then came days of decline. Under a feeble sun and a lack-lustre sky the air grew cold and faint: and the tree entered on a phase of decline, slow at first but increasing in speed till almost precipitate. Declines and falls have also (like all else) their charts of intensity growing to a climax and falling away inevitably thereafter. A stone flung into the air has a history like the giant tree. It shoots up, up, to its highest point, dwells on it, as it were, for a fraction of a second, and then turns to fall, gently at first, but later coming down with an increasing rush. This change up and change down seem to be one of the prime laws of life and of matter and of energy, from the boundless existence of the constellations to the atoms and the inexpressible complexities of nature. Everything seems subject to such a process and our imaginations cannot conceive anything exempt, or anything which will ever be exempt. A stone flung up and falling, a branch budding and growing bare, a fire flaring up and going out, a sentiment being born, developing and dying, everything good or bad in events and in things, in the animal creation, and in plants, in suns and in particles, in everything that is or happens, exhibit obedience to this universal law of change, growth and decay. Detached atoms retain the character and share the fate of their former whole. The lovers on the sloping river-bank near the giant tree were thus reproducing the universal harmony, in their narrow and temporary harmony, as they clipped and twined together in rhythmical counterchange of their inmost emotions. They were so much larger than the insects which shone red in the sunset or turned green in the moonshine: they were so much smaller than the tree: yet in their degree and kind they were in accord with the course of nature, as expressed in the force which linked the fireflies and made the tree bear seed. They partook of the ambitions which coming from the mists of time and from the chaos of space make planets revolve in their orbits and electrons whirl together: and if our insatiable curiosity makes us seek to know, however dimly, what is going on up there or down there, let us tell ourselves that we are part of all that is, that we obey the very laws which govern alike the unimaginable whole and its hugest components, and that therefore our infinitesimal experience if we can expand or contract it indefinitely may guide us as to the experiences both of the greatest and of the smallest.