TIME AND CHANGE 



served ways of the Eternal, if these bodies had had 

 worlds in their train, teeming with life, which met 

 the same fate as the central colliding bodies. 



Does not force as we know it in this world go its 

 own way with the same disregard of the precious 

 thing we call life? Such long and patient prepara- 

 tions for it, — apparently the whole stellar system 

 in labor pains to bring it forth, — and yet held so 

 cheaply and indifferently in the end ! The small in- 

 sect that just now alighted in front of my jack-plane 

 as I was dressing a timber, and was reduced to a 

 faint yellow stain upon the wood, is typical of the 

 fate of man before the unregarding and unswerving 

 terrestrial and celestial forces. The great wheels 

 go round just the same whether they are crushing 

 the man or crushing the corn for his bread. It is all 

 one to the Eternal. Flood, fire, wind, gravity, are 

 for us or against us indifferently. And yet the earth 

 is here, garlanded with the seasons and riding in the 

 celestial currents like a ship in calm summer seas, 

 and man is here with all things under his feet. All 

 is well in our corner of the universe. The great mill 

 has made meal of our grist and not of the miller. 

 We have taken our chances and have won. More 

 has been for us than against us. During the little 

 segment of time that man has been upon the earth, 

 only one great calamity that might be called cosmi- 

 cal has befallen it. The ice age of one or two hun- 

 dred thousand years was such a calamity. But man 



270 



