THE PURPOSE OF DIVERSITY 391 



The overwhelming complexity and diversity of this vast 

 cosmos in its every part and detail, is the great fundamental 

 characteristic which our highest science has brought promi- 

 nently to our notice ; but neither science nor religion has 

 given us the slightest clue as to why it should be so. 

 Science says : " It is so. Ours not to reason why ; but 

 only to find out what is." Religion says : " God made it 

 so " ; and sometimes adds, " it was God's will ; it is impious 

 to seek any other reason." In the present work I have 

 endeavoured to suggest a reason which appeals to me as 

 both a sufficient and an intelligible one : it is that this 

 earth with its infinitude of life and beauty and mystery, and 

 the universe in the midst of which we are placed, with its 

 overwhelming immensities of suns and nebulae, of light and 

 motion, are as they are, firstly, for the development of life 

 culminating in man ; secondly, as a vast school-house for 

 the higher education of the human race in preparation for 

 the enduring spiritual life to which it is destined. 



I have endeavoured to show that some portion at least 

 of what seems a superfluity of elements in our earth-structure 

 has served the purpose of aiding the gradual progress of 

 man from barbarism to material civilisation ; while another 

 portion has furnished him with materials which have alone 

 enabled him to penetrate into the two unknown worlds with 

 which he was encompassed — those of the almost infinitely 

 great and of the almost infinitely little ; but both alike 

 attractive and grand in their revelations ; both offering ever- 

 fresh vistas of unfathomed mysteries ; both impressing upon 

 him the existence of immanent forces and controlling mind- 

 power as their only possible cause. 



I suggest, further, that these deeper and deeper mysteries 

 which confront us everywhere as we advance farther in our 

 knowledge of this universe, are now serving, and will serve 

 in the future so long as man exists upon the earth, to give 

 him more and more adequate conceptions of the power, and 

 perhaps to some extent of the nature, of the author of that 

 universe ; will furnish him with the materials for a religion 

 founded on knowledge, in the place of all existing religions, 

 based largely on the wholly inadequate conceptions and 

 beliefs of bygone ages. 



