TO THE READER.

eries Completing the word "miseries" (Dutch: ellenden) from the previous page., which surround man in his rapid course. These sorrows, which man comes to love because he is blinded, darken him so much that he becomes entirely incapable of contemplating the rays of the eternally-shining days through them; let alone that he would love them and follow their light alone.

So it is that this life of ours—according to the words of a soul taught by God This likely refers to the mystic Antoinette Bourignon, whose spiritual teachings profoundly influenced Swammerdam's later life and work.—can be called nothing but a passing day, if we compare it to eternity. In this very short day of our miserable life, man is subject to so many different kinds of sorrows that no other animals are as miserable as he. In this regard, his own corruption is even more harmful to him than all his miseries, or even the Devil himself; for it is nothing but that evil nature which gives Satan the opportunity and power to plunge man, through constant temptations, into eternal miseries, and to unite him forever with evil.

You will find all this clearly depicted in the description of the five-hour life-span Swammerdam observed that while the Mayfly nymph lives underwater for years, its adult form survives for only a few hours to mate and die—a fact he uses here as a powerful memento mori. of this little creature; which, at the time of its transformation, is devoured by the fish in the water, and by the birds in the air and on the land: where it often gives up its spirit in the midst of