The
lamentations of the ages, then, have not erred. Something tragic is
involved in the framework of the universe. In order to abide,
divulsion must occur. Destruction of organism is going on all around
us, and ever will go on. Things must unceasingly be torn apart. One
might call this destructive and lamentable change the only steadfast
feature of the world.
V
Yet after all, and often in this very process of divulsion, we catch
glimpses of a nobler sort of change, For there is a third species to
which I might perhaps give the name of transforming: change. When, for
example, a certain portion of oxygen and a certain portion of
hydrogen, each having its own distinctive qualities, are brought into
contact with one another, they utterly change. The qualities of both
disappear, and a new set of qualities takes their place. The old ones
are gone,--gone, but not lost; for they have been transformed into new
ones of a predetermined and constant kind. Only a single sort of
change is open to these elements when in each other's presence, and in
precisely that way they will always change. In so changing they do
not, it is true, fully keep their past; but a fixed relation to it
they do keep, and under certain conditions may return to it again. The
transforming changes of chemistry, then, are of a different nature
from those of the mechanic destruction just described.
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