COMRADES IN ZEAL. 3^5 



whether they affect great men or small. He knows no tradition large 

 enough to check the movement of science. Among the Scandinavians 

 and the Dutch, in nations too small to obscure the democracy of learn- 

 ing, we find much the same feeling. In France, in Germany, even in 

 England, the tradition of great names, the customs of great museums, 

 largely outweigh the testimony of the things themselves. It has taken 

 a long time to bring about in these countries the application of the 

 simple and necessary law of priority in nomenclature. To this law 

 all naturalists have assented in theory, but with the reserve of excep- 

 tions in favor of great men or the traditions of great museums. The 

 willingness to adopt new views, to utilize new classifications, to see 

 things in new lights, is, broadly speaking, in proportion to the spirit 

 cf democracy by which a worker is surrounded. A perfect democracy 

 means a perfect perspective — each man, each idea, each theory stand- 

 ing for what it is, with all the 'covering of make-believe thrown off.' 

 For the zealous search in which we meet as comrades is the worship 

 of the greatest God known to religion, the God of the things as they are. 

 And here come the reasons why even the prophets of civilization 

 should cultivate the virtue of modesty. The universe, of which we 

 have explored a few points, is so gigantic in space, so monstrous in 

 duration, that it baffles all our powers of collective thought to conceive 

 of its existence. 'Time is as long as space is wide.' We can not 

 picture the universe as limitless in space or in time, nor can we think 

 of it as having bounds in distance or in duration. And with all its 

 grandeur, it is so finely put together, so delicately adjusted, so eternally 

 interdependent, that the smallest of all its parts is as large as the 

 largest, that if another atom could be brought in from beyond the 

 range of space and added to its infinite side, even if this were done 

 only a moment after time should cease to be, the whole mass of eternity 

 might be thrown from its bearings, its adjustment destroyed and the 

 creation of aeons of evolution flung back into primitive chaos. Or 

 again, may be not this, but something else might happen, for likely 

 enough matter is nothing substantial at all, but each molecule merely 

 the vortex of a whirling current of force. Wherefore, bearing on our 

 scientific shoulders the vastness of a universe whose elements are un- 

 knowable, unthinkable, 'solid and substantial, vast and unchanging,' 

 we may well, to-night, as Thackeray once said on a similar occasion, 

 say, 'We may well think small beer of ourselves and pass around the 

 bottle.' 



