6 From Matter to Man. 



average uniformity, may be simply illustrated. 

 When water is boiling and bubbling in a pot its 

 action seems chaotic : order is apparently absent and 

 disorder rampant. Yet closer scrutiny reveals more 

 or less rhythm in the seething froth, a sequence even 

 in the blowing and bursting of the water bells, as 

 well as a cycle in the rotation of the chemical 

 changes. Hence, if even we can see an order 

 reigning in this chaos, what would there not be to a 

 " conscious atom " — dancing through a life-time in the 

 hundredth part of a second — in this terrible topsy- 

 turvy? 



Similarly, are we not such conscious atoms at home 

 in our planetary hurly-burly? May not all this 

 seeming astral and mundane order be but the 

 illusions of ignorance, the mirage of nonentity, the 

 kaleidoscopings of insignificance ; even as our 

 sensations of sabbath quiet and midnight stillness 

 are utterly irreconcileable with the earth's frantic 

 " corkscrew " through space. May not the order of 

 the stars be but the halo of distance and our dreams 

 of perfection the perspective of prejudice ? We 

 mundane midgets impose our time, our sequence, our 

 orderliness, our interpretations, and our Deities on 

 the universe, as inalienable privileges and divinely 

 begotten rights, as if we were ourselves lords of space, 

 the acme of creation ; instead of being mere accre- 

 tions of atomic dust, accidents of a moment, and 

 parasites of a planet which is itself but a mote in the 

 sunbeam of eternity. 



