At this point it may be asked that an example should be given of one of these elementary routines which the king set going. And this seems a reasonable request, and yet it is somewhat too peremptory. For in the world we may know of what nature the movements of the atoms are without being able to say exactly what the motion of any one is. In such a case a type is the only possible presentation. Again, take the example of a crystal. We know that a crystal has a definite law of shape, and however much we divide it we find that its parts present the same conformation. We cannot isolate the ultimate crystalline elements, but we infer that they must be such as to produce the crystal by their combination.
Now life on the valley was such in its main features as would be produced by a combination of routines of the kind explained. There were changes and abrupt transitions, but the general and prevailing plan of life was that of a routine of alternating acts of a pleasurable and a painful kind. It was just such as would be built up out of elementary routines, on which the king could count, and which, unless he modified their combinations, tended to produce rhythmic processes of a larger kind. And even the changes and abruptnesses had a recurrent nature about them, for if any routine in the valley altered suddenly, it was found that there were cases of other routines altering in like manner, when the conditions under which they came were similar. Thus the fundamental type of the action which the king instituted was that of a routine AB, AB, as described above. But there were two circumstances which caused a variation, so that this simple routine was modified.
Firstly, there was not one being only but many.
Secondly, the king wished to have some of his pain-bearing power set free from time to time. He did not wish to have to be continually spending it all in maintaining the routines he had started at first, and those immediately connected with them.
When he first began to organize the life of the beings he did not consciously keep back any of his pain-bearing power, but threw it all in the activities which he started. Still from time to time he wished to start new activities quite unconnected with the old, and for this reason he withdrew some of his pain-bearing power, as will be shown afterwards.