Read the following passage and answer the questions.
Pictured: Tower Ruins by Thomas Cole
You admire a tower of granite which has weathered the storms of so many years. Yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, and whatever builds is better than whatever is built. The invisible thought which created the tower is even greater than the hand which built it. There is always a fine cause which is itself the effect of a finer cause. Everything looks permanent until its secret is known. Nature looks stable, but it has a cause like everything else. . . . Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.
Adapted from “Circles” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
QUESTIONS Write at least two sentences on each question.
1. What is the main example Emerson gives for cause and effect?
2. People usually think of the builder of a tower as a very strong man. Why
does Emerson describe him as having a “little waving hand?”
3. What does Emerson mean that “cause and effect are two sides of one fact?”
Why does he use the title “Circles?”
4. Emerson’s theme is cause and effect. How is this paragraph itself an example of cause-effect writing?