oper; he is here as the rains, the dews, the
flowers, the rocks, the soil, the trees, are here. He appeared when the
time was ripe, and he will disappear when the time is over-ripe. He is
of the same stuff as the ground he walks upon; there is no better stuff
in the heavens above him, nor in the depths below him, than sticks to
his own ribs. The celestial and the terrestrial forces unite and work
together in him, as in all other creatures. We cannot magnify man
without magnifying the universe of which he is a part; and we cannot
belittle it without belittling him.

Now we can turn all this about and look upon it as mankind looked upon
it in the prescientific ages, and as so many persons still look upon it,
and think of it all as the work of external and higher powers. We can
think of the earth as the footstool of some god, or the sport of some
demon; we can people the earth and the air with innumerable spirits,
high and low; we can think of life as something apart from matter. But
science will not, cannot follow us; it cannot discredit the world it has
disclosed--I had almost said, the world it has created. Science has made
us at home in the universe. It has visited the farthest stars with its
telescope and spectroscope, and finds we are all akin. It has sounded
the depths of matter with its analysis, and it finds nothing alien to
our own bodies. It sees motion everywhere, motion within motion,
transformation, metamorphosis everywhere, energy everywhere, currents
and counter-currents everywhere, ceaseless change everywhere; it finds
nothing in the heavens more spiritual, more mysterious, more celestial,
more godlike, than it finds upon this earth. This does not imply that
evolution may not have progressed farther upon other worlds, and given
rise to a higher order of intelligences than here; it only implies that
creation is one, and that the same forces, the same elements and
possibilities, exist everywhere.

VII

Give free rein to our anthropomorphic tendencies, and we fill the world
with spirits, good and bad--bad in war, famine, pestilence, disease;
good in all the events and fortunes that favor us. Early man did this on
all occasions; he read his own hopes and fears and passions into all the
operations of nature. Our fathers did it in many things; good people of
our own time do it in exceptional instances, and credit any good fortune
to Providence. Men high in the intellectual and philosophical world,
still inv