he God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws
exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He
cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
The bubbles on the foam which coats a stormy sea are floating episodes,
made and unmade by the forces of the wind and water. Our private
selves are like those bubbles--epiphenomena, as Clifford, I believe,
ingeniously called them; their destinies weigh nothing and determine
nothing in the world's irremediable currents of events.

[334] How was it ever conceivable, we ask, that a man like Christian
Wolff, in whose dry-as-dust head all the learning of the early
eighteenth century was concentrated, should have preserved such a
baby-like faith in the personal and human character of Nature as to
expound her operations as he did in his work on the uses of natural
things? This, for example, is the account he gives of the sun and its
utility:--

"We see that God has created the sun to keep the changeable conditions
on the earth in such an order that living creatures, men and beasts,
may inhabit its surface. Since men are the most reasonable of
creatures, and able to infer God's invisible being from the
contemplation of the world, the sun in so far forth contributes to the
primary purpose of creation: without it the race of man could not be
preserved or continued.... The sun makes daylight, not only on our
earth, but also on the other planets; and daylight is of the utmost
utility to us, for by its means we can commodiously carry on those
occupations which in the night-time would either be quite impossible.
Or at any rate impossible without our going to the expense of
artificial light. The beasts of the field can find food by day which
they would not be able to find at night. Moreover we owe it to the
sunlight that we are able to see everything that is on the earth's
surface, not only near by, but also at a distance, and to recognize
both near and far things according to their species, which again is of
manifold use to us not only in the business necessary to human life,
and when we are traveling, but also for the scientific knowledge of
Nature, which knowledge for the most part depends on observations made
with the help of sight, and without the sunshine, would have been
impossible. If any one would rightly impress on his mind the great
advantages which he derives from the sun, let him imagine himself
living through only on