SUMMARY OF CONTENTS 



I. THE WONDER OF THE WORLD 



The sense of wonder a human characteristic, though 

 very varied in expression It lies at the roots of science 

 and philosophy, and is one of the footstools of religion 

 What are the mainsprings of rational wonder? The 

 abundance of power in the world We cannot think of it 

 as beginning or as ending An illustration from Radium 

 The power of life is not less wonderful A water-mite 

 is relatively more efficient than a steam-engine, and a 

 fire-fly than a search-light The constructive and destruc- 

 tive power of microbes The abundance of life Goethe's 

 expression of this The wonder of the immensities of 

 Nature remains in spite of our modern annihilation of 

 distance Fraunhofer " approximavit sidera," but there is 

 still room for wonder The manifoldness of Nature, an 

 overflowing form-fountain Intricacy of things, an ant is 

 many times more visibly intricate than a locomotive 

 "The simplest organism we know is far more complex 

 than the Constitution of the United States" Amid all 

 this multiplicity and intricacy there is a pervading order 

 The world is a cosmos, not a curiosity-shop; a universe, 

 not a multiverse Most disturbances of the order are of 

 man's making "All epidemic diseases could be abolished 

 in fifty years" The pervading order is seen in the uni- 

 versal network of interrelations Nature is a vast system 

 of linkages The web of life It is true that there is uni- 

 versal flux The world is "a changeful process in which 

 nought endures save the flow of energy and the rational 

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