46 The Bible of Nature 



tation is a brief description of how every particle 

 of matter in the universe is altering its motion with 

 reference to every other particle. It does not tell 

 us why particles thus move; it does not tell us why 

 the earth describes a certain curve round the sun. 

 It simply resumes, in a few brief words, the rela- 

 tionships observed between a vast series of phe- 

 nomena. It economizes thought by stating in 

 conceptual shorthand that routine of our percep- 

 tions which forms for us the universe of gravita- 

 ting matter."^ 



Conclusion. — We cannot do better than sum up 

 by quoting Kant's famous passage: 



"The world around us opens before our view so mag- 

 nificent a spectacle of order, variety, beauty, and con- 

 formity to ends that, whether we pursue our observations 

 into the infinity of space in the one direction, or into its 

 illimitable divisions on the other, whether we regard the 

 world in its greatest or in its least manifestations — even 

 after we have attained to the highest summit of knowledge 

 which our weak minds can reach — we find that language 

 in presence of wonders so inconceivable has lost its force, 

 and number its power to reckon, nay, even thought fails 

 to conceive adequately, and our conception of the whole 

 dissolves into an astonishment without the power of ex- 

 pression — all the more eloquent that it is dumb. 



"Everywhere around us we observe a chain of causes 

 and effects, of means and ends, of death and birth; and 



iKarl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science," revised 

 edition, 1900, p. 99. 



