ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



seems to state the case fairly. And yet, how can a 

 naturalist fall back upon teleology? Is not Nature 

 sufficient unto herself? Must we inject our own little 

 methods and makeshifts into the ways of the Eter- 

 nal? We might as well try to walk off the sphere as 

 try to compass this problem in the terms of our 

 own experience. The inscrutable, the unthinkable, 

 the unknowable, confront us on all sides. 



So far as I can see the Creative Energy in nature 

 has no plan nor end. Plans are the ways of the finite, 

 not of the Infinite. Man alone has plans and ends. 

 The Infinite cannot be defined or interpreted in 

 terms of our human lives. It transcends all speech. 

 To name any one thing as the purpose and end of 

 creation is like naming the end of a sphere, or the 

 direction of a circle. All bodies with which we deal 

 on the earth have an upper and an under side, but 

 the earth itself is all top side; there is no under side, 

 though the orbs in the heavens, to our eye, have a 

 lowest point or bottom side. Every tangible body 

 with which we deal rests upon some other body, but 

 the orbs float in vacuity. The irregular solid bodies 

 with which we deal have three dimensions — length, 

 breadth, and thickness — but, properly speaking, 

 the sphere has none of these; it has only mass. 



When we discuss or attempt to describe what we 

 call God, or what I call the Eternal, in terms of man, 

 as the theologians do, something within us rises up 

 and says, No. A magnified man, or a man raised to 



£16 



