Three drops of water, stranded in a crevice on the side of an
inland mountain, talked in this way:
First Drop--"They say there is an ocean whence we came and to
which we shall return."
Second Drop--"They say we three drops are made in the image of
that ocean; that as far as we go, which is not far, we are
miniature oceans."
Third Drop--"Bosh and nonsense. There is no ocean. It is all
superstition. Before we were born here, from the mist, what were
we? When we evaporate in a few minutes what becomes of us? You
two drops make me feel sorry for you. I know that when I cease
reflecting that white cloud up there, that ends ME. I have no
delusions about oceans or going back to anything." ----
You know what happened. The cloud formed into rain and our three
drops were washed into a tiny trickling stream. The thin stream
of rain ran into a brook, the brook into a river. Soon the three
drops were back in the ocean--possibly without knowing it.
Shall we some day go rolling back to the ocean of cosmic wisdom
whence we came?
Is it possible that man is indeed made in the image of God, as
drops are made in the ocean's image--the individual men, like the
individual drops, being sent forth to do necessary cosmic work
through the universe, going back to the ocean after each errand
is done, and so going back and forth, forever and ever?
That would not be such a mean destiny, we should say. It would
certainly be a very democratic form of cosmic government. ----
Inferior men, inferior women, unworthy of comparison with
perfect, cosmic wisdom?
Not at all. Not inferior men and women, but inferior mediums,
inferior brains, bodies and planets through which to work.
Is one drop of water inferior to another? Is any inferior to the
purest drop in the ocean?
No. But one drop runs through the gutter of a stable, another
rolls from a mountain spring, a third carries in solution the
germ of typhus. But all three came pure from the ocean and all
will go back to the ocean pure.
DID WE ONCE LIVE ON THE MOON?
AND SHALL WE MOVE ON TO THE SUN SOME FINE DAY?
The most interesting questions are such as these:
Whence did we come?
Whither are we going?
And, by the way, what are we? Are we of any true importance?
Are we a permanent part of the universal scheme, privileged to
move along through the ages and see the end as we have seen the
beginning? Or are we, as advanced science says, merely like the
weevil in the biscuit--no part of the Baker's plan?
Are we indestructible specks of cosmic intelligence, lighting up
and animating one material body after another--never
destroyed--or do we play on this earth the passing part of the
microbe in the Brie cheese, which gives that cheese its flavor?
----
A great scientist, coldly analyzing the chemical processes
essential to the creation of each new human being, scoffs at any
possibility of immortality. With the microscope at his eye, he
magnifies nature's mysteries; he sums up the investigations of
the Hertwig brothers; he discourses learnedly of the nucleolus of
the Cytula--or progeny cell. He declares that science is able to
watch the creation of a human being, as it watches the progress
of a chick in the egg. He asserts that each new creature is
merely the result of a chemical process blending qualities of the
mother and father. Having a "final beginning," man must have a
final end. Man--a mixture of two sets of qualities--has no more
chance of immortality than has beer, which is a mixture of malt
and hops.
Read and think over this cold summing-up of our mean, limited
destiny as science farthest advanced now sees it:
"It must appear utterly senseless now to speak of the immortality
of the human person, when we know how this person, with all its
individual qualities of body and mind, has arisen. How can this
person possess an eternal life without end? The human person,
like every other many-celled individual, IS BUT A PASSING
PHENOMENON OF ORGANIC LIFE. With its death, the series of its
vital activities ceases entirely, just as it began."
That certainly is discouraging to a man who for fifty years has
sung "I want to be an angel."
Yet that is what Haeckel has to say about our chance of
immortality. But the other side of the grave has the LAST say,
and we think it will discredit Haeckel. We should even undertake
to do that now and here in two columns of a yellow journal. But
we are DETERMINED before the column ends to ask you what you
think of our moon-earth-sun transmigration notion.
The sun is now a blazing mass, inconceivably huge, inconceivably
fierce in our eyes. Its flames leap hundreds of thousands of
miles into space. If our earth fell to the sun, it would melt as
a snow-flake falling upon a blazing forest. We certainly do not
readily look upon the sun as our future home, if we accept its
present condition as permanent.
But once upon a time, hundreds of millions of years back, this
earth used to look TO THE MOON, on a smaller scale, as the sun
now looks to us. If there were on the moon at that time inferior
human beings, in a low state of cosmic evolution, they
undoubtedly had to thank the earth for their life, as we thank
the sun. To them the earth, then incandescent, blazing with the
heat that now reveals itself through volcanoes, was simply a
whirling ball of fire, put in its place to warm them.
They could no more think that men would ever come to live here
than we can now think of moving on to the sun. ----
In course of time this earth cooled off. It cooled so thoroughly
that the moon died of cold. Life could no longer continue there.
The dead satellite's destiny thenceforward was to show gratitude
for past heat by moving our tides and cheering our poets. As
life died out on the cold moon which had given us temporary
hospitality, life sprang into being on this planet, now fitted to
support it.
Here, on a larger sphere, with greater opportunities, mankind is
growing, and will far outstrip all that it could have done on the
poor little moon.
Meanwhile, as we struggle on, improving slowly, the sun, as
science proves, is cooling off in its turn. The flames become
less fierce as the thousands of centuries roll by. When we shall
have developed as much as possible on this limited planet, our
home will be cooled and ready on the sun, centre of our life in
this corner of space.
We shall move up a step--as boys do in the public schools. We
shall have been moon men, earth men, and shall graduate into sun
men. Think of a home so vast! On that grand star we shall lead
lives worth while, and justify Huxley's belief that men exist
somewhere compared to whom we should "be as black beetles
compared to us."
The excitement of meeting our brothers from other planets as they
move up to the sun in batchcs will be great.