The Part played by Infancy 111 



are reaching a very considerable result. I had got 

 these facts pretty clearly worked out, and carried 

 them around with me some years, before a fresh 

 conclusion came over me one day with a feeling of 

 surprise. In the old days before the Copernican 

 astronomy was promulgated, man regarded him- 

 self as the centre of the universe. He used to 

 entertain theological systems which conformed to 

 his limited knowledge of nature. The universe 

 seemed to be made for his uses, the earth seemed 

 to have been fitted up for his dwelling place, he 

 occupied the centre of creation, the sun was made 

 to give him light, etc. When Copernicus over- 

 threw that view, the effect upon theology was cer- 

 tainly tremendous. I do not believe that justice 

 has ever been done to the shock that it gave to 

 man when he was made to realize that he occupied 

 a kind of miserable little clod of dirt in the uni- 

 verse, and that there were so many other worlds 

 greater than this. It was one of the first great 

 shocks involved in the change from ancient to 

 modern scientific views, and I do not doubt it was 

 responsible for a great deal of the pessimistic phi- 

 losophizing that came in the seventeenth and eigh- 

 teenth centuries. 



Now, it flashed upon me a dozen years or so ago 

 after thinking about this manner in which man 



