CHAPTER XXXI 



THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF WORLDS 



IN the sixty or eighty years intervening between the discovery of 

 the telescope and the publication of Newton's Principia, man- 

 kind penetrated more deeply into the mystery of his surroundings 

 than in all the previous years of his intellectual life. These 

 sixty or eighty years saw the establishment of the Coppernican 

 system, of the science of mechanics, of the law of gravitation, 

 of the true dimensions of the solar system ; with it the little- 

 ness of the earth, the grandeur of the sun, the almost infinite 

 distance of the stars. It was within this period that man 

 learned to know at last his true place in creation. 



When this vast work was complete it would seem as if 

 natural investigation could no further go. But the inherent 

 impulse of the mind forbids a stop. Coppernicus had shown 

 the true system of planetary orbits, Kepler had established 

 the laws of planetary motion, Newton had revealed the cause 

 and binding force. There still remained the profound question 

 which had agitated the mind of man from the earliest time 

 in which he had begun to reflect upon existence. This was 

 the origin of the world. In so far as they were not simply 

 systems of conduct and morality, or mere rescripts of the his- 

 tory of an especial people, what we call religions represent 

 mainly an endeavour to solve this profound problem. Practically 

 all of the various faiths of the various peoples included some 

 essay in cosmogony. 



These early endeavours were naturally crude. Few of them 

 had any material basis either in fact or in observation. They 

 were for the most part merely like the extraordinary stories 

 which spring up in the minds of highly imaginative children ; 

 they represent in truth simply the intellectual childhood of the 

 race. Brahma in meditation on the lotus leaf through long 

 ages, producing at length a golden egg as large as the universe, 

 out of which the latter was slowly evolved, is a type. The 



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