The law governs not actions only, but all definite effects whatsoever.  If the luminiferous ether did not resist the sun’s influence, it could not be wrought into those undulations wherein light consists; if the air did not resist the vibrations of a resonant object, and strive to preserve its own form, the sound-waves could not be created and propagated:  if the tympanum did not resist these waves, it would not transmit their suggestion to the brain; if any given object does not resist the sun’s rays,—­in other words, reflect them,—­it will not be visible; neither can the eye mediate between any object and the brain save by a like opposing of rays on the part of the retina.

These instances might be multiplied ad libitum, since there is literally no exception to the law.  Observe, however, what the law is, namely, that some resistance is indispensable,—­by no means that this alone is so, or that all modes and kinds of resistance are of equal service.  Resistance and Affinity concur for all right effects; but it is the former that, in some of its aspects, is much accused as a calamity to man and a contumely to the universe; and of this, therefore, we consider here.

Not all kinds of resistance are alike serviceable; yet that which is required may not always consist with pleasure, nor even with safety.  Our most customary actions are rendered possible by forces and conditions that inflict weariness at times upon all, and cost the lives of many.  Gravitation, forcing all men against the earth’s surface with an energy measured by their weight avoirdupois, makes locomotion feasible; but by the same attraction it may draw one into the pit, over the precipice, to the bottom of the sea.  What multitudes of lives does it yearly destroy!  Why has it never occurred to some ingenious victim of a sluggish liver to represent Gravitation as a murderous monster revelling in blood?  Surely there are woful considerations here that might be used with the happiest effect to enhance the sense of man’s misery, and have been too much neglected!

Probably there are few children to whom the fancy has not occurred, How convenient, how fine were it to weigh nothing!  We smile at the little wiseacres; we know better.  How much better do we know?  That ancient lament, that ever iterated accusation of the world because it opposes a certain hindrance to freedom, love, reason, and every excellence which the imagination of man can portray and his heart pursue,—­what is it, in the final analysis, but a complaint that we cannot walk without weight, and that therefore climbing is climbing?