SUMMARY OF CONTENTS 



I. THE WONDER OF THE WORLD 



The sense of wonder a human characteristic, though 

 very varied in expression — It Hes at the roots of science 

 and philosophy, and is one of the footstools of religion — 

 What are the mainsprings of rational wonder? — The 

 abundance of power in the world — We cannot think of it 

 as beginning or as ending — An illustration from Radium 

 — The power of life is not less wonderful — A water-mite 

 is relatively more efficient than a steam-engine, and a 

 fire-fly than a search-light — The constructive and destruc- 

 tive power of microbes — The abundance of life — Goethe's 

 expression of this — The wonder of the immensities of 

 Nature remains in spite of our modern annihilation of 

 distance — Fraunhofer "approximavit sidera," but there is 

 still room for wonder — The manifoldness of Nature, an 

 overflowing form-fountain — Intricacy of things, an ant is 

 many times more visibly intricate than a locomotive — 

 "The simplest organism we know is far more complex 

 than the Constitution of the United States" — Amid all 

 this multiplicity and intricacy there is a pervading order — 

 The world is a cosmos, not a curiosity-shop; a universe, 

 not a multiverse — Most disturbances of the order are of 

 man's making — "All epidemic diseases could be abolished 

 in fifty years" — The pervading order is seen in the uni- 

 versal network of interrelations — Nature is a vast system 

 of linkages — The web of life — It is true that there is uni- 

 versal flux — The world is "a changeful process in which 

 nought endures save the flow of energy and the rational 



