ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



time. In all the grand processes and transforma- 

 tions of nature the element of time enters on such 

 a scale as to dwarf all human efforts. 



ii 



When we say of a thing or an event that it was a 

 chance happening, we do not mean that it was not 

 determined by the laws of matter and force, but we 

 mean it was not the result of the human will, or of 

 anything like it; it was not planned or designed by 

 conscious intelligence. Chance in this sense plays a 

 very large part in nature and in life. Though the re- 

 sult of irrefragable laws, the whole non-living world 

 about us shows no purpose or forethought in our 

 human sense. For instance, we are compelled to 

 regard the main features of the earth as matters 

 of chance, the distribution of land and water, of 

 islands and continents, of rivers, lakes, seas, moun- 

 tains and plains, valleys and hills, the shapes of the 

 continents; that there is more land in the northern 

 hemisphere than in the southern, more land at the 

 South Pole than at the North, is a matter of chance. 

 The serpentine course of a stream through an allu- 

 vial plain, a stream two yards wide, winding and 

 ox-bowing precisely as does the Mississippi, is a 

 matter of chance. The whole geography of a coun- 

 try, in fact, is purely a matter of chance, and not 

 the result of anything like human forethought. The 

 planets themselves — that Jupiter is large and 



94 



