It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct
the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present
period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its
being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree
of comparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face,
on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and
a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both
countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State
preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were
settled for ever.
Nature exhibits a continual progress, starting from the
mechanical and chemical activity of the inorganic world, proceeding
to the vegetable, with its dull enjoyment of self, from that to the
animal world, where intelligence and consciousness begin, at first
very weak, and only after many intermediate stages attaining its last
great development in man, whose intellect is Nature's crowning point,
the goal of all her efforts, the most perfect and difficult of all her
works. And even within the range of the human intellect, there are a
great many observable differences of degree, and it is very seldom
that intellect reaches its highest point, intelligence properly
so-called, which in this narrow and strict sense of the word, is
Nature's most consummate product, and so the rarest and most precious
thing of which the world can boast.