The
common states of a man's life are called infancy, childhood, youth,
manhood, and old age. That every man, whose life is continued in the
world, successively passes from one state into another, thus from the
first to the last, is well known. The transitions into those ages only
become evident by the intervening spaces of time: that nevertheless they
are progressive from one moment to another, thus continual, is obvious
to reason; for the case is similar with a man as with a tree, which
grows and increases every instant of time, even the most minute, from
the casting of the seed into the earth. These momentaneous progressions
are also changes of state; for the subsequent adds something to the
antecedent, which perfects the state. The changes which take place in a
man's internals, are more perfectly continuous than those which take
place in his externals; because a man's internals, by which we mean the
things appertaining to his mind or spirit, are elevated into a superior
degree above his externals; and in those principles which are in a
superior degree, a thousand effects take place in the same instant in
which one effect is wrought in externals.
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