It is well to let down our metropolitan pride a little. Man thinks
himself at the top, and that the immense display and prodigality of
Nature are for him. But they are no more for him than they are for
the birds and beasts, and he is no more at the top than they are. He
appeared upon the stage when the play had advanced to a certain point,
and he will disappear from the stage when the play has reached another
point, and the great drama will go on without him. The geological ages,
the convulsions and parturition throes of the globe, were to bring him
forth no more than the beetles. Is not all this wealth of the seasons,
these solar and sidereal influences, this depth and vitality and
internal fire, these seas, and rivers, and oceans, and atmospheric
currents, as necessary to the life of the ants and worms we tread under
foot as to our own? And does the sun shine for me any more than for yon
butterfly? What I mean to say is, we cannot put our finger upon this
or that and say, Here is the end of Nature. The Infinite cannot be
measured. The plan of Nature is so immense,--but she has no plan,
no scheme, but to go on and on forever. What is size, what is time,
distance, to the Infinite? Nothing. The Infinite knows no time, no
space, no great, no small, no beginning, no end.
I sometimes think that the earth and the worlds are a kind of nervous
ganglia in an organization of which we can form no conception, or less
even than that. If one of the globules of blood that circulate in our
veins were magnified enough million times, we might see a globe teeming
with life and power. Such is this earth of ours, coursing in the veins
of the Infinite. Size is only relative, and the imagination finds no end
to the series either way.