THE SCIENTliST. 25 
under a l-ictli inch oil ininicrsiou lens ol 
cnoiinous aperture. It had a \\'orkinL; pos- 
sibility of 15,000 diameters, or as we miy;ht 
Say in a larger fashion, magnified an obiect 
125,000,000 times its natural size. I could 
see nothing but an illuminated white field 
with not the suggestion of a living t)bject 
upon it; and not until instructed what to 
took for did I see the tiny l)acilli at work 
ii]ion the fragments of lung tissue they had 
succeeded in tearing off. My eyes had to 
be opened before I could look into this 
]-:ingdom. 
The great Philosopher has said, "The 
kingdom of God is not far from any one of 
you." There is a larger sense in which we' 
must know life, than merely by the strangely 
impressive elements which affect us from 
without. Whatever interpretation we put 
upon nature it is not the right one unless it 
arises from a knoM'ledge of her law. The 
point where the human being l)ecame more 
psychical than physical is hardly determin- 
able for the still lapse of ages furnishes no 
data. 15ut we are mostly soul now, and the 
pathless wilderness of the Avorld that 
stretched out so infinitely mysterious before 
our forefathers seems now to show some 
clearer light, flashed from the morning of 
the eternal day. We are on the eve of a 
new philosophy. It is but a short cut into 
the kingdom, and the highest and loftiest 
concept of the eternal lies in that simplest 
manifestation of Himself "In the nature of 
thi'.-igs." 
Last summer I captured a large moth 
miller, such as sap the sweets from the 
moon-ilower and trumpet-creeper. I was 
interested in the structure of his eye; I found 
it to be a compound eye, the cornea deli- 
cately perforated with hundreds of tiny holes 
into which seemed to be inserted a series of 
prismatic lenses, beautifully arranged so 
that each aperture was supplied with a per- 
fectly formed lens. Those of you Avho are 
more familiar with entomology have doubt- 
less observed more carefully, and readily 
understand what I describe; but w hat most 
interested me, and what I had never before 
known, \\ as the fact that this little creatur(; 
was unlike us in that it could see in all 
directions at once, i. e., all directions !)ounded 
by his sight-area; that inlirect vision was a 
thing unknown to him; that lie saw his world 
all at once, which \\ as changed and widened 
to him only as he darted from one point t(j 
another. We do not see half our world; in 
fact the scientifically possible point of our 
direct vision is an almost imperce]:)tible spot, 
everything else seen beyond its limitations 
comes of indirect vision. There is a lesson 
here for us which drops into the kingdom of 
moral and mental truth, we must see more 
of the world about us. 
We must see it with less guessing and in- 
direct vision; the certain perception of 
knowledge and the larger view from the 
field of the soul will only let us in through 
the wide gates of nature into the kingdom 
of the Eternal. 
It is so much easier to be inspired by en- 
thusiasm than to search out the truth. The 
elements of knowledge are imperishal>le 
they are hard to get; it recjuires work, but 
not ill-guided labor. It rec^uires the deep 
and ceaseless operation of the soul-functions, 
but they must be in the right direction. It 
is not uncertain but that in the nature of 
things lies the clearest exposition of all 
mystery in the mental and material world. 
Why should we be afraid of nature or her 
revelations? She is our handiest interpreter, 
she wdll make it plain. A very eminent 
surgeon now living, says, "the time is not 
distant when diseases will l)e treated more 
generally by mechanical means than by 
drugs." 
Shall Aesculapus forever be our criterion? 
Shall we have Dana or Copernicus? An- 
drews or Galileo? Demosthenes or Glad- 
stone? 
A slope of rocky hill-side in western 
Connecticut .contains a wonderfully curious 
and interesting deposit of minerals. Some 
