ntire flora and fauna to be explained
without any intervention of mind? And if there is intelligence in the
universe, is this intelligence a chemical result of the combination of
molecules? is it a physical result of caloric or of electricity? It is
in vain that you give to material agents an unlimited time; what has
time to do here? Whether the world as it now exists arose out of
nothing, or whether it was slowly formed during thousands of ages, the
question remains the same. With matter and time, you will not succeed in
creating intelligence; this were an operation of transcendent alchemy
utterly beyond our power. In the theory of _slow causes_, the adjective
ends by devouring the substantive; it seems that by dint of becoming
slow the causes become superfluous. A breath of reason upsets, like a
house of cards, the structures of this erring and misnamed science. Time
has a relative meaning and value. We reckon duration as long or short,
by taking human life as our measure. But they tell of insects which are
born in the morning, arrive at mature age at mid-day, and only reach the
evening if they are patriarchs of their race. Is it not easy to conceive
of beings organized for an existence such that our centuries would be
moments with them, and centuries heaped together one of our hours?
Suppose one of these beings to be contemplating our geological periods,
and slow causes will to him appear rapid causes, and the question of
intelligence will be the same for him as for us.

It is manifest that the attempt is being made to restore the worship of
the old _Chronos_, to whom the ancients had erected temples. Let us
look the idol in the face. Time appears at first to our imagination as
the great destroyer. He is armed with a scythe, and passes gaunt and
bald over the ruins of all that has lived. When he lifts up his great
voice and cries--

Mighty nations famed in story
Into darkness I have hurled,--
Gone their myriads and their glory
(Lo! ye follow) from the world:
My dark shade for ever covers
Stars I quenched as on they rolled:--

the beautiful, and frightened girl in the song is not singular as she
exclaims in her terror:

Ah! we're young, and we are lovers,
Spare us, Reaper gaunt and old![128]

Such is the first impression which time makes upon us. But birth
succeeds to death. From an inexhaustible spring, nature sends gushing
forth new products and new dev