cannot kill Himself. He cannot make the greater 

 less than the less. He cannot make twice ten any- 

 thing else than twenty. He cannot make a stick that 

 has but one end. He cannot make the past, future. He 

 cannot make one who has lived never to have lived. 

 He cannot make the mortal, immortal ; nor the im- 

 mortal, mortal. He can change the form of things, but 

 He cannot abolish a thing. 



Pliny preaches the unity of the Universe and his re- 

 ligion is the religion of Humanity. 



Pliny says, "We cannot injure God, but we can injure 

 man. And as man is a part of nature or God, the 

 only way to serve God is to benefit man. If we love 

 God, the way to reveal that love is in our conduct 

 toward our fellows." 



Pliny was close upon the Law of the Correlation of 

 Forces, and he almost got a glimpse of the Law of 

 Attraction or Gravitation. He sensed these things, but 

 could not prove them. 



Pliny touched life at an immense number of points. 

 "What he saw, he knew, but when he took things on 

 the word of Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville, for 

 these gentlemen adventurers have always lived, he 

 fell into curious errors. For instance he tells of horses 

 in Africa that have wings, and when hard pressed, fly 

 like birds ; of ostriches that give milk, and elephants 

 that live on land or sea equally well ; of mines where 

 gold is found in solid masses and the natives dig into 

 it for diamonds. 



But outside of these little lapses, Pliny writes sanely 



31 



LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



