HORIZON LINES 



its orbit around the sun, are not revealed to our 

 sense as motion, but as changes from night to day 

 and from one season to another. Slow, soft, still, the 

 moon and the sun rise and drift across the heavens, 

 and the impassive earth seems like a ship becalmed. 

 No hint at all of the more than rifle-bullet speed 

 through space. It is all too big for us. The celestial 

 machine is no machine at all to our senses, but its 

 vast movements go on as gently and as easily as the 

 falling of the dew or the blooming of the flowers, 

 and almost as unconsciously to us as the circulation 

 of the blood in our hearts. 



We are in the heavens and are a part of the great 

 astronomical whirl and procession, and know it not. 

 It is symbolical of our lives generally. We do not 

 realize that we are a part of Nature till we begin to 

 think about it. Our lives proceed as if we were two 

 — man and Nature — two great antagonistic or 

 contrary facts, but the two are one; there is only 

 Nature. We can draw circle within circle, and circle 

 around circle, but we cannot circumscribe Nature. 

 That is the fact over all. 



As struggling human beings we diverge from one 

 another, oppose one another, defeat one another. 

 All our differences and antagonisms arise from our 

 need of action and of living. The lesson of the sphere 

 is hard to learn, hard to state. Our powers of detach- 

 ment are hardly equal to it. Our lives are rounded 

 by the great astronomic curves. The contradictions 



229 



