ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



win's mind and led him to say that in the beginning 

 God must have created a few species of animals and 

 vegetables and then left them to develop and popu- 

 late the world. 



Says Renan, "When a chemist arranges an ex- 

 periment that is to last for years, everything which 

 takes place in his retort is regulated by the laws of 

 absolute unconsciousness; which does not mean that 

 a will has not intervened at the beginning of the ex- 

 periment, and that it will not intervene at the end." 

 There was no beginning nor will there be any ending 

 to the experiment of creation; the will is as truly 

 there in the behavior of the molecules at one time as 

 at another. The effect of Renan's priestly training 

 and associations clings to him like a birthmark. 



In discussing these questions our plumb-line does 

 not touch bottom, because there is no bottom. "In 

 the infinite," says Renan with deeper insight, "ne- 

 gations vanish, contradictions are merged"; in 

 other words, opposites are true. Where I stand on 

 the surface of the sphere is the center of that sur- 

 face, but that does not prevent the point where you 

 stand being the center also. Every point is a center, 

 and the sky is overhead at one place as at another; 

 opposites are true. 



The moral and intellectual worlds present the 

 same contradictions or limitations — the same 

 relatively of what we call truth. 



Nature's ways — which with me is the same as say- 



92 



