GREAT QUESTIONS IN LITTLE 
— wonders beneath wonders everywhere; it sup- 
plies the missing link between matter and spirit; 
it helps us to understand the unity of things — that 
all are of one stuff, that near and remote are the 
same, that celestial and terrestrial join hands; it 
helps us to grasp the phenomena of magnetism, of 
electricity, and of gravity, and of the vital inter- 
change, so to speak, between all the hosts of heaven. 
“Not a hawthorn blooms,” says Victor Hugo, “but 
is felt at the stars.” If the ether is a reality, this may 
be true. “The divine ship” (the earth), says Whit- 
man, ‘sails the divine seas.”’ The ether is this 
shoreless and soundless sea — the sea in which all 
worlds and systems flcat like bubbles. 
II. NATURAL SELECTION 
Darwin could not believe that man was the re- 
sult of chance, neither can any of us reach that 
conclusion in the terms in which we at present do 
our thinking. It is unthinkable. If we suppose that 
an accidental meeting or a clash of the molecules 
of inert matter resulted in the lowest forms of life, 
how are we to get these myriads of living forms 
from the amoeba up to man, out of the aimless 
struggle and jostling of living cells, unless the cells 
know what they want, or work according to some 
plan or purpose? How can there be any progress 
toward higher forms, any codperation among these 
minute living units, such as we actually see, in 
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