n at the expense of narrowing our
conception of man. With Hamlet it contemptuously says, 'What is this
quintessence of dust!' It is so impressed by the mileage and tonnage of
the universe, so abased before the stupendous measurements of the
cosmos, the appalling infinity and eternity of its space and time, that
it forgets the marvel of the mind that can grasp all these conceptions,
forgets, too, that, big and bullying as the forces of nature may be, man
has been able in a large measure to control, indeed to domesticate,
them. Surely the original fact of lightning is little more marvellous
than the power of man to turn it into his errand-boy or his horse, to
light his rooms with it, and imprison it in pennyworths, like the genius
in the bottle, in the underground railway. Mere size seems unimpressive
when we contemplate such an extreme of littleness as say the ant, that
pin-point of a personality, that mere speck of being, yet including
within its infinitesimal proportions a clever, busy brain, a soldier, a
politician, and a merchant. That such and so many faculties should have
room to operate within that tiny body--there is a marvel before which,
it seems to me, the billions of miles that keep us from falling into the
jaws of the sun, and the tonnage of Jupiter, are comparatively
insignificant and conceivable.

No, we must not allow ourselves to be frightened by the mere size and
weight of the universe, or be depressed because our immediate genealogy
is not considered aristocratic. Perhaps, after all, we are sons of God,
and as Mr. Meredith finely puts it, our life here may still be

'... a little holding
To do a mighty service.'

'Things of a day!' exclaims Pindar. 'What is a man? What is a man not?'

It is good for our Nebuchadnezzars, the kings of the world, and
conceited, successful people generally, to measure themselves against
the great powers of the universe, to humble their pride by contemplation
of the fixed stars; but a too humble attitude toward the Infinite, a too
constant pondering upon eternity, is not good for us, unless, so to say,
we can live with them as friends, with the inspiring feeling that,
little as we may seem, there is that in us which is no less infinite, no
less cosmic, and that our passions and dreams have, as Mr. William
Watson puts it, 'a relish of eternity.'

Readers of Amiel's 'Journal' will know what a sterilising, petrifying
influence his trance-like contemplation of the Infi