TIDAL EVOLUTION. 15 



all that it has done. The mystery of the great whole and the 

 origin of the universe it leaves as great as ever. Sometimes 

 we feel hopeful that eventually the genius of man will unfold 

 it all. And indeed we have good cause and a perfect right to 

 be proud of what the human intellect has been able to accom- 

 plish. But it seems to me that every step ahead only tends 

 to show the greater extent of the unknowable. As Carlyle 

 has so finely said in his Sartor Resartus: *' System of Nature! 

 To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, nature remains of 

 quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all exper- 

 ience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and 

 measured square miles. The course of nature's phases on this, 

 our little fraction of a planet, is partially known to us; but 

 who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what 

 infinitely larger cycles of courses our little epicycle revolves 

 upon. To the little tadpole or minnow every cranny and 

 pebble, and quality and accident of its little native creek may 

 have become familiar, but does the minnow understand the 

 ocean tides and periodic currents, the trade winds or mon- 

 soons or the moon's eclipses, by all of which the conditions of 

 its little creek is regulated, and may (immiraculously enough) 

 be quite overset and reversed ? Just such a little minnow is 

 man, his creek, this planet; his ocean, the immeasurable all; 

 his monsoons and periodic currents, the mysterious course of 

 nature through aeons and aeons." 





