bodies, in The Inductive Method, if they had waited to be born by The
Inductive Method, would ever have heard of it? Being born is one
inference and dying is another. Man leaves a wake of infinity after him
wherever he goes, and of course it's where he doesn't go. It's all
infinity--one way or the other."

* * * * *

And it came to pass in my dream as I lay on my bed in the night, I
thought I saw Man my brother blinking under the dome of space, infinite
monad that he is: I saw him with a glass in one hand and a Slide of
Infinity in the other, and, in my dream, out of His high heaven God
leaned down to me and said to me, "What is THAT?"

And as I looked I laughed and prayed in my heart, I scarce knew which,
and "Oh, Most Excellent Deity! Who would think it!" I cried. "I do not
know, but I think--_I think_--it is a man, thinking he is studying a
GERM--one tiny particle of inimitable Immensity ogling another!"

And a very pretty sight it is, too, oh Brother Monads--if we do not take
it seriously.

And what we really need next, oh comrades, scientists--each under our
separate stones--is the Laugh Out of Heaven which shall come down and
save us--laugh the roofs of our stones off. Then we shall stretch our
souls with inferences. We shall lie in the great sun and warm ourselves.

VIII

Multiplication Tables

It would seem to be the main trouble with the scientific mind of the
second rank that it overlooks the nature of knowledge in the thirst for
exact knowledge. In an infinite world the better part of the knowledge a
man needs to have does not need to be exact.

These things being as they are, it would seem that the art of reading
books through their backs is an equally necessary art to a great
scientist and to a great poet. If it is necessary to great scientists
and to great poets it is all the more necessary to small ones, and to
the rest of us. It is the only way, indeed, in which an immortal human
being of any kind can get what he deserves to have to live his life
with--a whole cross-section of the universe. A gentleman and a scholar
will take nothing less.

If a man is to get his cross-section of the universe, his natural share
in it, he can only get it by living in the qualities of things instead
of the quantities; by avoiding duplicate facts, duplicate persons, and
principles; by using the multiplication table in knowledge (inference)
instead of adding everything up, by taki