288 From Matter to Man. 



enunciate is that the universe perennially exists, with 

 each phenomenon revolving upon its own axis and 

 solely for its own day, the whole universe being but 

 the sum of the parts, and each part a product at once 

 ceaselessly new in its form and everlastingly old in its 

 constituents, so that a different panorama is presented. 

 For though phenomena but cycle from automata to 

 automata ceaselessly, they include in their wondrous 

 metamorphoses combinations of materials endowed 

 with infinite complexity. Unending evolution and 

 devolution, creation and resurrection, are therefore 

 inevitable. The unconscious atoms, small builders 

 though they be, evolve not only a universe in its 

 general outlines but an existence peopled with infinite 

 forms and endowed with limitless capacities. Man 

 pictures himself as nature idealised, but while earth 

 knows of none higher, it is folly to install him as the 

 most exalted or ultimate product in the universe ; for 

 of the contents of other worlds we know not, while the 

 womb of the eternal possesses endless fertility. 



The universe thus unrolls before our eyes as a 

 magnificently coloured and gaily caparisoned pageant 

 of things great and small, transient and durable, yet 

 beginningless and endless ; for into the eternal past it 

 rolls never more to be seen, and out of the eternal 

 present it unwinds, full-blown and complete, the same 

 yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Nature to the seer thus 

 seems a vast semi conscious leviathan, feeling with 

 countless fingers along unending lengths its fitful shapes, 

 which shrink at every touch and shirk the reading 



