THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



of evolution culminate in us. There have been other 

 lines of evolution than ours, and it would take all 

 the forms of life on the globe to sum up the past. 



How wonderful that the globe itself should have 

 been born out of the nebular mist — the cosmic 

 world-stuff in the womb of the great sidereal 

 mother; that it should have had its fiery and turbu- 

 lent youth; that it should have sobered and ripened 

 with age; that its mantle of fertile soil should have 

 been wrought out of the crude igneous and stratified 

 rocks; that it falls forever around the sun, and never 

 falls into it; that it is so huge that we cannot span 

 it, even in imagination, but can picture it to our- 

 selves only by piecemeal, as with a globe of our own 

 making; and yet that it is only as a globule of blood 

 in the veins of the Infinite; that it is moving with 

 such incredible speed, and yet to our senses seems 

 forever at rest; that the heavens are always above 

 us wherever we are upon its surface, and never 

 under us, as the image of a globe might lead us to 

 infer would be the case at times — all this, I say^ 

 and more, fills me with perpetual wonder. 



More and more I think of the globe as a whole, 

 though I can only do so by figuring it to myself as 

 I see it upon the map, or as a larger moon. My 

 mind's eye cannot follow the sweep of its curve and 

 take in more than a small arc at a time. More and 

 more I think of it as a huge organism pulsing with 

 life, real and potential. 



16 



