158 THE NATURE OF NATURE 



improving itself. And through the working of this 

 ideal, and under the influence of the rest of the 

 world, the Earth has developed from a flaming 

 sphere into a molten ball, into a globe of barren 

 land and sea, and so on into the verdure-covered and 

 animal- and man-inhabited Earth of the present 

 age. The Earth, like the rose-seed, contained 

 within it a core of Activity which permeated every 

 particle and constrained it with its fellow-particles 

 to direct itself towards the ideal a core of Activity 

 which was animated by the ideal, while the ideal 

 on its part had an innate faculty of perfecting 

 itself. 



But the Earth is itself only a minute mite 

 even of the Solar System. And the Sun is 

 only one of perhaps a thousand million other 

 stars, some so distant that light travelling at the 

 rate of 186,000 miles a second must have started 

 from them before the birth of Christ to reach us 

 to-day. Nevertheless the Earth is composed of the 

 same ultimate particles of matter that even the 

 most distant stars are made of. The Earth, the 

 Sun and stars, are composed of electrons which are 

 all alike. Doubtless there are individual differences 

 between electrons as there are between men, but in 

 a general way they are as much alike as all men 

 appear alike to an eagle. And of these electrons 

 the whole Universe is made as well as the Earth. 

 The same laws of motion, of gravitation, and of 

 electro-magnetic and chemical attraction, obtain 

 there as here. The scale of the Stellar World is 

 immensely larger than the scale we are accustomed 

 to on this Earth. But the same fundamental laws 



