' ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



every cause has its antecedent cause; where we can 

 live only by dealing with parts and fragments, and 

 by separating one thing from another. The astro- 

 nomic laws and conditions, or our conceptions of 

 them, are thrown into confusion the moment we try 

 to apply them in our practical mundane lives. In 

 vain we try to abolish friction and achieve perpetual 

 motion, but the heavenly bodies move without 

 friction, and move forever and ever. Motion is the 

 prime condition of the universe. It is the condition 

 or necessity we are under in this world, on the sur- 

 face of this planet, that sets us on the quest of final 

 causes and gives rise to our conceptions of the made 

 and the maker, the good and the bad, the end and 

 the beginning. We cannot say that we are watched 

 over by the gods — our personification of the uni- 

 versal mind that pervades nature — nor that we 

 are not watched over by them, because that were to 

 use the language of our surface existence. All we can 

 say is that we are a part of the cosmos, fragments of 

 the total scheme of things, and share its laws and 

 conditions, and that the more perfectly we adjust 

 the nature within us to the nature without us, the 

 better we fare. With the Infinite there is no time 

 and no space, only an everlasting here, an everlast- 

 ing now. 



Yet how can puny man interpret the universe or 

 say aught of it in terms of his mundane experiences? 



224 



