Why then a Borgia, or a Cataline? 
    Who knows but He whose hand the lightning forms,
    Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms;
    Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar’s mind;
    Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind? 
    From pride, from pride our very reas’ning springs;
    Account for moral as for nat’ral things: 
    Why charge we heaven in those, in these acquit? 
    In both, to reason right, is to submit.

      Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
    Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
    That never air or ocean felt the wind;
    That never passion discomposed the mind. 
    But =all= subsists by elemental strife;
    And passions are the elements of life. 
    The general =order=, since the whole began,
    Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.

* * * * *

      Look round our world, behold the chain of love. 
    Combining all below and all above;
    See plastic nature working to this end,
    The single atoms each to other tend;
    Attract, attracted to, the next in place
    Formed and impelled its neighbor to embrace,
    See matter next, with various life endued,
    Press to one center still the gen’ral good. 
    See dying vegetables life sustain,
    See life dissolving, vegetate again;
    All forms that perish, other forms supply,
    (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die)
    Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne,
    They rise, they break, and to that sea return,
    Nothing is foreign—­parts relate to whole;
    One all-extending, all-preserving soul
    Connects each being greatest with the least;
    Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast;
    All served, all serving; nothing stands alone;
    The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.

But power alone is not sufficient to produce action.  There must be a =cause= to call it forth, to set in operation and exhibit its latent energies.  It will remain hid in its secret chambers till efficient causes have set in operation the means by which its existence is to be discovered in the production of change, effects, or results.  There is, it is said, in every created thing a power sufficient to produce its own destruction, as well as to preserve its being.  In the human body, for instance, there is a constant tendency to decay, to waste; which a counteracting power resists, and, with proper assistance, keeps alive.

The same may be said of vegetables which are constantly throwing off, or exhaling the waste, offensive, or useless matter, and yet a restoring power, assisted by heat, moisture, and the nourishment of the earth, resists the tendency to decay and preserves it alive and growing.  The air, the earth, nay, the ocean itself, philosophers assure us, contain powers sufficient to self-destruction.  But I will not enlarge here.