NEW GLEANINGS IN FIELD AND WOOD 



is as great as if this were the case, and yet the 

 fraction of his light and heat that actually falls 

 upon this mote of a world adrift in sidereal space 

 is so infinitely small that it could hardly be com- 

 puted by numbers. In our religion we appropriate 

 God to ourselves in the same way, but he knows 

 us not in this private and particular way, though 

 we are all sharers in the Universal Beneficence. 



ii. NATURE'S METHODS 



NATURE baffles us by methods so unlike our own. 

 Man improves upon his inventions; he makes them 

 better and better and discards the old. The first 

 airplane flew a few miles with its pilot; now the 

 airplane flies hundreds of miles and carries tons of 

 weight. Nature has progressed steadily from lower 

 to higher forms, but she keeps all her lower forms; 

 her first rude sketches are as precious to her as the 

 perfected models. There is no vacancy at the 

 bottom of her series, as there is in the case of man. 

 I am aware that we falsify her methods in contrast- 

 ing them with those of man in any respect. She 

 has no method in our sense of the term. She is 

 action, and not thought, growth and not con- 

 struction, is internal and not external. To try to 

 explain her in terms of our own methods is like 

 trying to describe the sphere in terms of angles 

 and right lines. 

 The origin of species is as dark a problem as is 



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