connected with nothing and which are connected with everything.
Everything is cog, pulley, cord, spring, in this vast machine.

It is likewise in the physical sphere. A wind which blows from the
depths of Africa and the austral seas, brings a portion of the African
atmosphere, which falls in rain in the valleys of the Alps; these rains
fertilize our lands; our north wind in its turn sends our vapours among
the negroes; we do good to Guinea, and Guinea does good to us. The chain
stretches from one end of the universe to the other.

But it seems to me that a strange abuse is made of the truth of this
principle. From it some people conclude that there is not a sole minute
atom whose movement has not exerted its influence in the present
arrangement of the world; that there is not a single minute accident,
among either men or animals, which is not an essential link in the great
chain of fate.

Let us understand each other: every effect clearly has its cause, going
back from cause to cause in the abyss of eternity; but every cause has
not its effect going forward to the end of the centuries. All events are
produced by each other, I admit; if the past is delivered of the
present, the present is delivered of the future; everything has father,
but everything has not always children. Here it is precisely as with a
genealogical tree; each house goes back, as we say, to Adam; but in the
family there are many persons who have died without leaving issue.

There is a genealogical tree of the events of this world. It is
incontestable that the inhabitants of Gaul and Spain are descended from
Gomer, and the Russians from Magog, his younger brother: one finds this
genealogy in so many fat books! On this basis one cannot deny that the