316 THE ETHICAL KINSHIP 



thought at all, of the comforts of the ewe. It 

 was placed there on the ewe by an all-tender 

 creator, to be torn by his images from her 

 bleeding back and worn. The fossil forms found 

 in the rocks were not the bond fide remains of 

 creatures that had lived and perished when the 

 calcareous foundations of the continents were 

 forming in ancient sea-beds. They were counter- 

 feits, slyly designed by a suspicious providence, 

 and sandwiched among the strata ' to test human 

 faith.' The rainbow was a phenomenon with 

 which the laws of reflection and refraction had 

 nothing whatever to do. It was a sign or seal 

 stamped on the retreating storms as a pledge that 

 submersion would not be again used as a punish- 

 ment for sinners. The universal ruler was con- 

 ceived to be an individual of transcendent power 

 and respectability, but was supposed to spend 

 the most of his time and a good deal of anxiety 

 on the regulation and repair of his illustrious 

 likenesses. 



The history of intellectual evolution is the 

 history of disillusionment. The stars, we now 

 know, are not hatchways, but worlds. They burn 

 because they are fire. They blaze and circle in 

 obedience to their own unchangeable inertias, just 

 as the earth does. They blazed and wheeled when 

 the elemental matters of the earth mingled indis- 

 tinguishably with the vapours of the sun, and they 

 will blaze and wheel when the last inhabitant of 

 this clod has dissolved into the everlasting atoms. 

 The earth is rot the capital of cosmos nor the 



