First Origins. 7 



Moreover, the universe cannot be measured by- 

 planetary rules or weighed by planetary scales, for 

 Eternity has no stages to limit its duration, Existence 

 no clock to regulate its epochs, and the Everlasting 

 no map to define its areas. To a Sphinx, calm, 

 impassive, colossal, sitting upright in space, with head 

 in the stars and feet in the deeps — a being to whom 

 time was unknown, days and nights incomprehensible, 

 age a mystery, and planets as pearls — all the order 

 we prate about would be inappreciable to him. The 

 flight of even suns and stars in their courses would 

 seem but as a mesh of fire-flies on a summer's night, 

 and as devoid of order and sequence as the bubbling 

 of boiling water-bells to us. 



A water-bubble blows on the kettle's surface for a 

 second and disappears, falling but to reform the 

 domes of others incessantly. Similarly, by universal 

 reckoning, what are planets in their cyclic revolution, 

 the things they produce, and the time they last before 

 dispersing again into their constituent nebulous 

 elements, but similar ephemera. We, true enough, 

 parcel out time into past, present, and future; but 

 this feat is the measure of our own littleness; for 

 what are ten thousand mundane years to an universal 

 day ? Lastly, the earth has endured and apparently- 

 improved and progressed for thousands of years ; 

 hence, it may last, improve, and progress for thousands 

 of years more ; but this apparent permanency cannot 

 save it from the dissolution inseparable of necessity 

 from the haphazard conditions of its ephemeral 



