ounce of gold
may be reduced into four hundred and thirty two billion parts,
each microscopically visible.30 There is a deposit of slate in
Bohemia covering forty square miles to the depth of eight feet,
each cubic inch of which Ehrenberg found by microscopic
measurement to contain forty one thousand million infusorial
animals. Sir David Brewster says, "A cubic inch of the Bilin
polieschiefer slate contains above one billion seven hundred and
fifty thousand millions of distinct individuals of Galionella
ferruginea."31 It is a fact that the size of one of these insects
as compared with the bulk of a man is virtually as small as that
of a man compared with the whole scheme of modern astronomy. Thus,
if the problem of our immortal consequence is prejudicially
vitiated by contemplating the immense extremity of vision, it is
rectified by gazing on the opposite extremity. If man justly
scrutinized, without comparisons, is fitted for and worthy of
eternity,

30 Lardner, Hand Book of Natural Philosophy, book i. chap. v.31
More Worlds than One, ch. viii. note 3.

no foreign facts, however magnificent or minute, should alter our
judgment from the premises.

Thirdly, is it not evident that man's greatness keeps even pace
along the scale of magnitude with the widening creation, since it
is his mind that sees and comprehends how wondrous the dimensions
of the universe are? The number of stars and the limits of space
are not more astounding than it is that he should be capable of
knowing such things, enumerating and staking them off. When man
has measured the distance and weighed the bulk of Sirius, it is
more appropriate to kneel in amazement before the inscrutable
mystery of his genius, the irrepressible soaring of his soul, than
to sink in despair under the swinging of those lumps of dirt in
their unapproachable spheres because they are so gigantic! The
appearance of the creation to man is not vaster than his
perception of it. They are exactly correlated by the very terms of
the statement. As the astronomic world expands, the astronomer's
mind dilates and must be as large as it in order to contain it in
thought. What we lose in relative importance from the enlargement
of the boundaries of the universe we gain from the new revelation
of our capacities that is made through these transcendent
achievements of our science. That we are favorites of the Creator
and destined for immortal glories is therefore logically and
morally