The Unlettered Learned. 227 



that of the minnow in the brook that flows past 

 its gnarly roots. Greek philosophy does not 

 explain the color of a flower, nor Roman 

 sophistry why birds build nests. 



Granted the desirability of all the intellectual 

 culture that centres in a university library, still 

 it is not indispensable when we take to the 

 woods and have a desire to know more of the 

 planet on which we live ; for this self-same earth 

 was a very complete affair and well worthy of 

 a place in the universe when the anthropoid ape 

 was the climax of evolutionary activity. Had 

 man never been, no reasoning creature from 

 Mars, we will say, could have thought of the in- 

 completeness of earth or supposed it was yet to 

 be the scene of higher intellectual activities ; 

 or, if the world had come to an end in the days 

 of continued struggle with wild beasts, of cave- 

 dwelling and cannibalism, it could not have been 

 said of the planet that it had closed its career 

 untimely ; nor, later, in the dawn of education, 

 could this have been said. Some nineteen 

 hundred years ago the end of the world was 

 confidently expected by a few thousands of 

 world-weary enthusiasts. 



