XIV 



MEDITATIONS AND CKITICISM3 



"TTOW inevitable that tlie early races and peoples 

 -^ — *- should have subordinated the sun and moon, 

 etc., to the earth. Are not these bodies clearly the 

 servants and attendants of the earth ? Are they not 

 placed there in the heavens to give us light and 

 ■warmth ? As the sun sinks towards the horizon, a 

 change seems actually to come over him. His light 

 grows thin and yellow. His day's work is done, 

 and he is going to rest, and in the morning will 

 rise refreshed and strong. In winter the winds and 

 the storms appear to drive him to the south, and he 

 is feeble and disheartened. 



Until science enlightens us we never dream that 

 the sunset or sunrise is not a solar phenomenon, 

 that these changes relate entirely to our little planet, 

 that winter and summer, day and night, etc., are not 

 universal phenomena, but local, and, as it were, per- 

 sonal phases of our planetary life. 



Now the Semitic cosmogony upon which our the- 

 ology is founded is the outcome of this same feeling, 

 this same geocentric conception of the universe. It 

 magnifies the individual into the universal. The 

 " London Spectator," in replying to Frederic Harri- 



