CONFORMITY WITH PLAN 335 



the universe, its planned construction and the control of its 

 working disappeared, and now everything was handed over 

 to physical necessity. The first thing that resulted was the 

 complete withdrawal of interest from the starry heavens. 

 The sky, which once was able to embody the idea of a pro- 

 vidence enthroned above it, became a wearisome mathematical 

 problem. In most human sensed-worlds to-day there is no 

 distinction between fixed stars and planets : in their place 

 have come irregularly arranged bright points, which are some- 

 how connected together physically. 



Beginning with the heavens, the physical process of 

 decomposition has gradually invaded the whole of the world- 

 as-sensed. If we assume from the beginning that there is no 

 conformity with plan hidden behind natural phenomena, but 

 always just the same mathematical calculation, complicated, 

 it is true, but utterly stupid, then all interest in these things 

 must die out. 



A sort of rot has set in in the sensed-worlds, and everything 

 within them has been handed over to disintegration. Since 

 Darwin's day, we see not only the inorganic objects, but also 

 the living things in the sensed-worlds of our fellow-men, fall to 

 pieces. In the majority of sensed-worlds, animals and plants 

 have become nothing but assemblages of atoms without 

 plan. The same process has also seized on the human being 

 in the sensed-worlds ; even the subject's own body is just an 

 assemblage of matter, and all its manifestations have become 

 reduced to physical atomic processes. 



If we look down attentively from our balloon on this ever- 

 spreading epidemic in the worlds-as-sensed, we get the impres- 

 sion of a dangerous infectious disease. The joy in the search 

 for new indications has quite slacked off. What is the use of 

 searching, if we know beforehand that the whole thing is just 

 a dance of atoms ? 



On the other hand, we perceive an alarming reduction in 



