SOUNDINGS 



have to pay in struggle and pain the price of our 

 development. Think you we should not have to pay 

 the same price in any other world worth living in? 



Emerson in his Journal quotes his brother Charles 

 as saying long ago that "the nap was worn off the 

 earth"; it was become threadbare, like an outworn 

 garment. Probably it seems so to each of us as time 

 goes on. In places in Europe the nap must be very 

 short at this time. But the nap will come again, even 

 on those shell-swept regions, after Nature has had 

 her way. Nature grows old in geologic or in cosmic 

 time; the mountains decay, the waters recede; but 

 in man's time the earth is endowed with perennial 

 youth. 



Science strips us of our illusions and delusions ; it 

 strips us of most of the garments in which the spirit 

 of man has sought in all ages to clothe itself against 

 the chill of an impersonal universe; it takes down 

 the protecting roof of the heavens above us and 

 shows us an unspeakable void strewn with suns and 

 worlds beyond numbers to compute, but nowhere 

 any signs of the blessed abode to which our religious 

 aspirations have pointed. 



It is interesting, in this connection, to note the 

 attitude of the old writers, such as Cornaro, the 

 Italian, toward the heavens. They evidently look 

 upon the heavens as outside of Nature. In speculat- 

 ing as to why it is that some persons have so little 

 vitality, Cornaro reckons the influence of the heav- 



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