CHAPTEE II. 



ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 



9. WHEN, on the sea-shore, we note how the hulls of 

 distant vessels are hidden below the horizon, and how, of 

 still remoter vessels, only the uppermost sails are visible, we 

 realize with tolerable clearness the slight curvature of that 

 portion of the sea's surface which lies before us. But when 

 we seek in imagination to follow out this curved surface as it 

 actually exists, slowly bending round until all its meridians 

 meet in a point eight thousand miles below our feet, we find 

 ourselves utterly baffled. We cannot conceive in its real 

 form and magnitude even that small segment of our globe 

 which extends a hundred miles on every side of us; much 

 less the globe as a whole. The piece of rock on which we 

 stand can be mentally represented with something like com- 

 pleteness: we find ourselves able to think of its top, its 

 sides, and its under surface at the same time ; or so nearly at 

 the same time that they seem all present in consciousness to- 

 gether; and so we can form what we call a conception of the 

 rock. But to do the like with the Earth we find impossible. 

 If even to imagine the antipodes as at that distant place in 

 space which it actually occupies, is beyond our power; 

 much more beyond our power must it be at the same time to 

 imagine all other remote points on the Earth's surface as 

 in their actual places. Yet we habitually speak as though 

 we had an idea of the Earth as though we could think of it 

 in the same way that we think of minor objects. 



What conception, then, do we form of it? the reader 



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