LITTLE circle of authors whom otherwise we would not know. 

 JOURNEYS We have the world of nature, but we would not have 



this world of thinkers, were it not for Pliny. Pliny 

 even quotes Sappho, who loved and sang, and whose 

 poems reach us only through scattered quotations, as 

 if Emerson's works should perish and we would re- 

 vive him through a file of the " Philistine" magazine. 

 C[ Pliny and Paul were contemporaries. Pliny lived at 

 Rome when Paul lived there in his own hired house, 

 but Pliny never mentions him, and probably never 

 heard of him. One man was interested in this world, 

 the other in the next. 



Pliny begins his great work with a plagiarism on Ly- 

 man Abbott: " There is but one God." The idea that 

 there were many arose out of the thought that be- 

 cause there are many things, there must be special 

 gods to look after them gods of the harvest, gods of 

 the household, gods of the rain, etc. 

 There is but one God, says Pliny, and this God mani- 

 fests Himself in nature. Nature and nature's work are 

 one. This world & all other worlds we see or can think 

 of are parts of nature. If there are other Universes, they 

 are natural, that is to say a part of nature. God rules 

 them all according to laws which He Himself cannot 

 violate. It is useless to supplicate Him, and absurd to 

 worship Him, for to do these things is to degrade Him 

 with the thought that He is like us. The assumption 

 that God is very much like us is not complimentary 

 to God & J> 



God cannot do an unnatural ora supernatural thing. He 

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