1 6 THE WORLD MACHINE 



ways or in the garden at Down. When with open mind we 

 regard the cosmos, alike the infinitely little and the infinitely 

 vast, there comes inevitably a sense of bewilderment and a per- 

 plexity that seems hopeless. The universe seems in travail of 

 some vast work whose purport or moral or object utterly 

 escapes us. It is in vain that we seek for evidence of any 

 purpose when we survey the heavens and contemplate the 

 probability that therein is an endless welter of dead suns, per- 

 haps hundreds or thousands of millions of them, incapable of 

 bearing life, and so far as we may perceive, mindless and dumb. 

 Their life is spent. Their sole use, so far as we may surmise, 

 is simply to pursue an empty track through the wilds of space 

 until, in a colossal catastrophe, they are dissipated again into 

 the formless nebula from which they sprang, to become the 

 spawn of newer worlds. 



It is in vain that we find any evidence of purpose or design 

 in the appearance of the vast and uncouth lizards of the 

 reptilian epoch the gigantic brontosaurs that paddled about 

 in the marshes, the fantastic pterodactyls who spread their 

 darkening wings upon the heavy and mephitic air of that 

 ancient time. Difficultly do we find a purpose in the tactics 

 of a huge shoal of salmon entering a narrow pocket to destroy 

 itself by the inrush of its own numbers. We fail to see the 

 import or consequence that lies in the prodigious effort of the 

 toiling millions of worker-ants that rear a million ant-hills, or 

 of the myriads of coral polyps that weave the graceful atolls 

 of the sea. 



It is equally in vain that we contemplate the scum upon a 

 duck-pond. This scum is the product of life, is teeming with 

 life. Yet the highest intelligence fails to discover -for it the 

 slightest utility ; and the instance is but one among thousands. 

 It is with a perplexity bordering upon revolt that we consider 

 the myriads of insects and of bacterial swarms which plague 

 our human kind, breeding suffering and disease, and serving, 

 so far as we may see, only to thwart the development of indi- 

 viduals and hence of the race. If mere bulk or numbers were 

 a measure of importance, in totality of bulk and numbers they 

 must vastly outclass all the higher forms of life. 



We cannot recognise infinite goodness or intelligence in the 

 avalanche, the cyclone, the lightning's bolt, the eruptions of 

 Mont Pele"e, the earthquake of Lisbon, the burning drouths 



