The swells that beat upon the shores of the ocean are not merely the
result of a local agitation of the waters. The pulse of the earth is in
them. The pulse of the sun and the moon is in them. They are more cosmic
than terrestrial. The earth wears her seas like a loose garment which
the sun and moon constantly pluck at and shift from side to side. Only
the ocean feels the tidal impulse, the heavenly influences. The great
inland bodies of water are unresponsive to them--they are too small for
the meshes of the solar and lunar net. Is it not equally true that only
great souls are moved by the great fundamental questions of life? What a
puzzle the tides must have been to early man! What proof they afford of
the cosmic forces that play upon us at all times and hold us in their
net! Without the proof they afford, we should not know how we are tied
to the solar system. The lazy, reluctant waters--how they follow the sun
and moon, "with fluid step," as Whitman says, "round the world"! The
land feels the pull also and would follow if it could. But the mobile
clouds go their way, and the aerial ocean makes no sign. The pull of the
sun and the moon is upon you and me also, but we are all unconscious of
it. We are bodies too slight to affect the beam of the huge scale.