1884.] Hylozoism and Hylo-Idealistn. 271 
stretches of interstellar space ; suns tenfold, twentyfold, a 
hundredfold more brilliant than ours, whose light travels 
earthward through decades, centuries, or millennia. Then 
they point to a drop of dirty water, crowded with swiftly 
darting animalcules, and tell us that the Earth, in compa- 
rison with the Universe, is infinitely smaller than that drop 
in comparison with the Earth, and that we and our indivi- 
dual and national concerns are thus of incalculably less 
relative importance than the family life and polity of Rotifera 
vulgaris. To all this we have listened ad nauseam. We are 
beginning to reflect that majesty which maybe measured by 
a foot-rule is a cheap kind of majesty after all, and that the 
exultation of popular lecturers in the sublimity of the Cosmos 
(which they seem to consider their own private and exclusive 
domain) is a little like the pride of a Limited Company in 
the ownership of the largest gasholder in the world. We 
feel inclined to retort — Call us Rotifers if you will ; but 
remember that we are Rotifers who can perceive our environ- 
ment, and that until perceived this environment is void, 
unshapen, and altogether null. Were the rotiferal con- 
sciousness capable of shaping forth the orbs of heaven, the 
consciousness would be superior to the orbs. It is true that 
our spheroid home makes a short circuit through space, and 
that the comet of 1811 makes a long circuit. It is true that 
the glory of Sirius surpasses the glory of our sun ; but light 
unseen and unthought is not light, and Sirius owes his 
splendour to the human imagination. Every man fashions 
and contains a Universe; and it is at least difficult to under- 
stand why the importance of the mind should be in inverse 
ratio to the magnitude of its cpntents. To be cowed before 
our own mental furniture is to resemble the mushroom 
millionaire, abashed by the size of his new house and the 
magnificence of its carpets and mirrors. Let us imitate 
neither his first bashfulness nor his subsequent brag, but 
learn to move easily about our mansion, as if to the manner 
born. 
Since the days of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, 
we have nearly had time to grow accustomed to our sur- 
roundings. Mankind begins with Geocentrism, passed on- 
ward through Heliocentrism to the conception of an 
uncentred Universe, and must now reconcile their conflicting 
impulses in Autocentrism. The Geocentric ideal was narrow 
and mean. The small parish of Earth regarded other 
regions of the Empire as minor adjuncts to its own glory, 
and the local King was popularly supposed to rule in accord* 
ance with this notion. Heliocentric and Acentric ideals 
