of its parts. Water is a medium, to facilitate the combination of
bodies, into which it enters itself, as a constituent part. Air is a
fluid whose business it seems to be, to furnish the other elements with
the space requisite to expand, to exercise their motion, and which is,
moreover, found proper to combine with them. These elements, which our
senses never discover in a pure state--which are continually and
reciprocally set in motion by each other--which are always acting and
re-acting, combining and separating, attracting and repelling--are
sufficient to explain to us the formation of all the beings we behold.
Their motion is uninterruptedly and reciprocally produced from each
other; they are alternately causes and effects. Thus, they form a vast
circle of generation and destruction--of combination and decomposition,
which, it is quite reasonable to suppose, could never have had a
beginning, and which, consequently can never have an end. In short,
Nature is but an immense chain of causes and effects, which unceasingly
flow from each other. The motion of particular beings depends on the
general motion, which is itself maintained by individual motion. This is
strengthened or weakened, accelerated or retarded, simplified or
complicated, procreated or destroyed, by a variety of combinations and
circumstances, which every moment change the directions, the tendency,
the modes of existing, and of acting, of the different beings that
receive its impulse.

If it were true, as has been asserted by some philosophers, that every
thing has a tendency to form one unique or single mass, and in that
unique mass the instant should arrive when all was in _nisus_, all would
eternally remain in this state; to all eternity there would be no more
than one Being and one effort: this would be eternal and universal
death.