May this not be our dissatisfied elements, desirous of change, speaking within us? And the often-just premonitions of death which come to men, how explain them other than as the stirring of our elements quickened by radiations from the unknown? The trouble of those stricken by a sudden and mortal fate, their inexplicable distress, the panic-stricken flock of teeming thoughts vainly seeking escape in their shadowy subconsciousness--all this morbid poignant possessed state must be due to our cells' foreknowledge that shortly their architecture will be changed. Our independent life puts no obstacle in the way of that universal ebb and flow, which sets through us and subjects us to the same law of eternal change which rules the rest of chaos. For these reasons the close of a career should not be to us a melancholy sight. To be born, to exist, to die should seem simple, natural, unchangeable things, only shades of difference even when considered to the farthest obscurity of their never-ending course. But to be eternal, there is a vision which exceeds! To be eternal! The universe withstands, unmoved, the passing of trees and beings and things. In its season everything must defile before the mirror of changeless time. Plants in their fading go the way of suns as they grow cold, of dreams as they pass on waking, of an insect as it perishes. In the imperishable universe things are born only to die. We, as atoms of the stream of life, can stiffen ourselves with the knowledge that we suffer only the common fate of all created things; that the same fate rules both material and spiritual things, men and stars following one curve in their careers; and that in nature no situation can endure unaltered. As we dwell on it, the idea of being eternal becomes impossible to our spirits. To be infinitely active for ever, what a prospect of overwhelming sameness! Perpetual life would be for us no less than a never-ending sleeplessness. We would have to endure with a constant endurance of constant circumstances, while others about us were born and died, while plants grew green and withered, whilst the rivers ran, and the suns burned themselves out; we would have to watch the ebb and flow of things, and the measured flight of hours, the evolution of form, the levelling of fine distinction. The same dreams, the same senses would function, without ever a stop, without ever a relieving variation--what a vision of weariness and monotonous despair! Like a great wide eye in which were mirrored chaos and its thousand ghostly shapes, an eye limpid but glassy, strained and aching with its long stare, over which it was ordered that no easeful lid might ever close.