nd we are not without
reason to suspect a fourth. If there are so many there are very likely
more, but we do not know whether there are or not. The innermost sphere
of life we know of is that of our own cells. These people live in a
world of their own, knowing nothing of us, nor being known by ourselves
until very recently. Yet they can be seen under a microscope; they can
be taken out of us, and may then be watched going here and there in
perturbation of mind, endeavouring [sic] to find something in their
new environment that will suit them, and then dying on finding how
hopelessly different it is from any to which they have been accustomed.
They live in us, and make us up into the single person which we conceive
ourselves to form; we are to them a world comprising an organic and an
inorganic kingdom, of which they consider themselves to be the organic,
and whatever is not very like themselves to be the inorganic. Whether
they are composed of subordinate personalities or not we do not know,
but we have no reason to think that they are, and if we touch ground, so
to speak, with life in the units of which our own bodies are composed,
it is likely that there is a limit also in an upward direction,
though we have nothing whatever to guide us as to where it is, nor any
certainty that there is a limit at all.

We are ourselves the second concentric sphere of life, we being the
constituent cells which unite to form the body of God. Of the third
sphere we know a single member only-the God of this world; but we see
also the stars in heaven, and know their multitude. Analogy points
irresistibly in the direction of thinking that these other worlds are
like our own, begodded and full of life; it also bids us believe that
the God of their world is begotten of one more or less like himself,
and that his growth has followed the same course as that of all other
growths we know of.

If so, he is one of the constituent units of an unknown and vaster
personality who is composed of Gods, as our God is composed of all the
living forms on earth, and as all those living forms are composed of
cells. This is the Unknown God. Beyond this second God we cannot at
present go, nor should we wish to do so, if we are wise. It is no
reproach to a system that it does not profess to give an account of the
origin of things; the reproach rather should lie against a system
which professed to explain it, for we may be well assured that such a
profession w