PHYSICAL SCIENCE 



between Gallic and Spanish provinces ; between 

 Egypt and Ethiopia a desert of barren sands must 

 stretch ! Why, if ants are ever endowed with human 

 intelligence, will not they in like manner portion 

 out a threshing-floor into many provinces ? 



8 But when you rise to what is truly great, then, as 

 often as you see armies marching forth with floating 

 banners, and the cavalry now scouting in front, now 

 massed on the flanks, as if some great design were 

 toward, you will pleasantly remark : 



The black swarm is hurrying through the plains. 



That host is a throng of ants, its evolutions are 

 in a back garden. In what do we excel the ants, 

 save in the measure of the puny little body ? That 

 is a mere point in which you sail, and war, and dis- 

 pose your kingdoms. Your kingdoms are lilliputian 

 even when they stretch from Ocean to Ocean. 



9 Only on high are the domains spacious ; to their 

 possession the mind is admitted, provided always 

 that it bring with it no taint of the body, but wipe 

 off all stain and pass forth like an armed man, 

 lightly equipped, nimble, modest in his wants. 

 When the soul reaches those regions, it receives 

 nourishment and growth ; as if freed from the 

 shackles of earth, it returns to the true source of its 



10 being. A proof of its divine origin is furnished 

 by the pleasure it derives from what is divine ; here 

 it feels itself at home, not in a strange land. 

 Without alarm it views the setting of the stars and 

 their rising, and the mazy orbits of the heavenly 

 bodies that yet move all in unison. It notes when 

 each star first shows its light on earth, when it 

 attains its meridian height, observes its orbit and 

 the limits of its descent. An interested spectator, it 



