THE UNFATHOMED UNIVERSE 15 



early days might have complained of its azoic dullness, u-hile 

 the primitive Biococci were proliferating in hillions be- 

 neath his feet. So to-day there may be forms of life and 

 modes of energy around us which we do not know. 



In any case, how different our world is from that of 

 the man born blind; and what, asks John Burroughs, if 

 we could go on opening one eye after another to the number 

 of a dozen or so, and were able, he should have added, to 

 correlate our impressions ? What if we had three or more 

 extra senses ? How different our view of Animate Nature 

 would have been if the microscope and the spectroscope, to 

 name only two of our extraneous sense-organs, had not been 

 invented ! Apart from such imaginings we have many re- 

 markable facts in regard to the cultivation of the senses that 

 we have. The blind man knows every footstep in the vil- 

 lage. In the opinion of some experts, there are consider- 

 able tracts of fallow ground in our brains, which may one 

 day be tilled. How slow should Man be in supposing that 

 he has exhausted a subject! There are few who have even 

 a calculus which will show them how far they have suc- 

 ceeded in discerning the more or less obvious inter-relations 

 or ^ aspects ' of the object of their study. Warned by such 

 errors as that of Comte, who declared that Man could never 

 know anything as to the chemical composition of the 

 heavenly bodies, we have learned to be cautious in not put- 

 ting in ^ full stops \ There is a large library now on the 

 animals of the Deep Sea, yet it is not very long since a 

 great naturalist declared that of the possible tenants of the 

 Oceanic Abysses we could not hope to know anything un- 

 less some of them — if there were any — happened to tumble 

 upwards to the superficial zones of reduced pressure. 

 Science has reason to beware of saying ^' Non possumus ''. 



