all, so much less "perennial than brass." In no respect was nature
more stable, more consecutive, than man.

In nature, indeed, as in one's self, there might be no ultimate
inconsequence: only, "the soul looks upon things with another eye,
and represents them to itself with another kind of face: for
everything has many faces and several aspects. There is nothing
single and rare in respect of itself, but only in respect of our
knowledge, which is a wretched foundation whereon to ground our
rules, and one that represents to us a very false image of things."
Ah! even in so "dear" a matter as bodily health, immunity from
physical pain, what doubts! what variations of experience, of learned
opinion! Already, in six years of married life, of four children
treated so carefully, never, for instance, roughly awaked from sleep,
"wherein," he would observe, "children are much more profoundly
involved than we,"--of four children, [103] two were dead, and one
even now miserably sick. Seeing the doctor depart one morning a
little hastily, on the payment of his fee, he was tempted to some
nice questions as to the money's worth. "There are so many maladies,
and so many circumstances, presented to the physician, that human
sense must soon be at the end of its lesson:--the many complexions in
a melancholy person; the many seasons in winter; the many nations in
the French; the many ages in age; the many celestial mutations in the
conjunction of Venus and Saturn; the many parts in man's body, nay,
in a finger. And suppose the cure effected, how can we assure
ourselves that it was not because the disease was arrived at its
period, or an effect of chance, or the operation of something else
that the child had eaten, drunk, or touched that day, or by virtue of
his mother's prayers? We suppose we see one side of a thing when we
are really looking at another. As for me, I never see all of