Earth System Physics

This poor world, the object of so much insane attachment, we are about to leave; it is but misery, vanity, and folly; a phantom, — the very fashion of which "passeth away."

M. Fries, who is the founder of the system of quaternary arrangement, and the authority to which the most philosophical of our writers upon the subject has so repeatedly referred. These opinions [which will follow below] are contained in the Introduction to a work published by M. Fries in 1825, under the name of Systema Orbis Vegetabilis, and may be said to exhibit the most condensed and well-arranged statement of the theory which has yet appeared...
§ 1. Nature is an universal complication of phenomena existing and acting in all places and at all times—an infinite power made manifest by the successive evolution of a finite power, the sum of the whole creation in a continuous state— all existent matter proceeding from perfection and pregnant with futurity...
§ 2. Nature must be considered as either perfect or approaching perfection
§ 3. The powers and the productions of nature are coexistent . All power is as it were a law under which a given production holds its existence, but in such a manner that all power is the finite revelation of an infinite law. To act and to exist is the same thing. Power therefore is nature without production ; Production is matter without power. Neither exists in nature by itself.
§ 4. All the powers of nature are more or less perfect manifestations of one primitive power, which acts by its different productions according to the same eternal, immutable, absolute laws. But the powers of nature act only by mutual reaction ; so that each power of nature becomes in its products impeded, interrupted, or quiescent.
§ 5, All things which exist in nature are a whole, and at the same time a part of a larger whole. They are capable of being themselves resolved into other wholes until the human mind sinks under ideas of sublimity and subtilty which are imperceptible to it,—of the universe and of atoms.
§ 6. It is impossible for the human mind, itself a finite creation, to regard nature, whether her powers or her productions are considered, in the light of the whole manifestation of an infinite power, but only as parts or fragments of such manifestation. But to comprehend these as one whole, that is, as an eternal and immutable yet ever varying body, or, as innumerable forms of one highest whole, is the end. of all disquisition, the sum of which we call a System.
§ 7. A system contains within itself the seeds of some more complete evolution, but it does not admit of arbitrary alterations. Not that any absolute system can ever be contrived; for I am by no means of the opinion of those who expect that a system is to be as unchangeable as if it were petrified.
§ 8. If nature be closely pursued, a system is called Natural; if this Ariadnean thread be not followed, it is called Artificial or factitious.
§ 9. A system of nature proceeding from subjects of the most simple organization to such as are more perfect, or from the circumference to the centre, is called a Mathematical System.
§ 10. A system of nature which takes for the basis of its arrangement the order of development of individuals is called Physiological.
§ 11. Philosophical systems do not depend upon individual productions which are subject to continual variation, but upon eternal and unchangeable ideas. These always proceed from the centre to the circumference, or from the most perfect productions to those of a lower order. This is the method of my Mycological system, rfnd it agrees with the mathematical system if the order be inverted. A Philosophical system depends upon the laws of logic; for the laws of logic are by no means notions contrived by man, but eternal and immutable, and established by Nature herself. As the rotation of the heavenly bodies, discovered after the laws of mathematics, must necessarily follow those laws; so also no observation in nature can invalidate the laws of logic. For the laws of logic are the laws of nature.
§ 12. A Philosophical system is superior to all others. It may at first appear, perhaps, of little moment, what way we follow follow in enumerating the productions of nature ; but if one way is more certain and more facile than another, that is surely to be preferred.

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...