The watch is now in a brilliant light; I lay my hand on it,
and it is in darkness. Its place has not been changed, but that of the
light has been. Many of the commonest changes in life are of this
sort. They are accidental or extraneous changes. In them, through all
its change, the thing abides. There is no necessary alteration of its
nature.
IV
But unhappily this is not the only species of change. It is not that
which has brought a wail from the ages, when men have seen what they
prize slip away. The common root of sorrow has been destructive
change. Holding the watch in my hand, I may drop it on the floor; and
at once the crystal, which has been so transparently protective, is
gone. If the floor is of stone, the back of the watch may be wrenched
away, the wheels of its delicate machinery jarred asunder. Destruction
has come upon it, and not merely an extraneous accident. In
consequence of altered surroundings, dissolution is wrought within.
Change of a lamentable sort has come. What before was a beautiful
whole, organically constituted in the way described in my first two
chapters, has been torn asunder. What we formerly beheld with delight
has disappeared.
And let us not accept false comfort. We often hear it said that, after
all, destruction is an illusion. There is no such thing.
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