i.] DREAD OF SIZE. 243 



that are needed. The method is that of science : but 

 it is also that of simple common sense. You will re- 

 member, therefore, that this is no mere theory or 

 hypothesis, but a pretty fair and simple conclusion 

 from palpable facts ; that the probability lies with the 

 belief that the glen is some hundreds of thousands of 

 years old ; that it is not the observer's business to 

 prove it further, but other persons' to disprove it, if 

 they can. 



But does the matter end here ? No. And, for 

 certain reasons, it is good that it should not end 

 here. 



The observer, if he be a cautious man, begins to 

 see if he can disprove his own conclusions ; moreover, 

 being human, he is probably somewhat awed, if not 

 appalled, by his own conclusion. Hundreds of thousands 

 of years spent in making that little glen ! Common 

 sense would say that the longer it took to make, the less 

 wonder there was in its being made at last : but the 

 instinctive human feeling is the opposite. There is in 

 men, and there remains in them, even after they are 

 civilised, and all other forms of the dread of Nature have 

 died out in them, a dread of size, of vast space, of vast 

 time; that latter, mind, being always imagined as space, 

 as we confess when we speak instinctively of a space of 

 time. They will not understand that size is merely a 

 relative, not an absolute term; that if we were a 

 thousand times larger than we are, the universe would 

 be a thousand times smaller than it is ; that if we could 

 think a thousand times faster than we do, time would 

 be a thousand times longer than it is; that there is 

 One in whom we live, and move, and have our being, to 

 whom one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand 



B 2 



