ony.
(Daemon of the World, Pt. I.)

And somewhere, "as fast and far the chariot flew," amid the mighty
globes would be seen a tiny speck, "earth's distant orb," one of "the
smallest lights that twinkle in the heavens." Alighting, Ianthe
would find something she had probably not seen elsewhere in her magic
flight--life, everywhere encircling the sphere. And as the little coral
reef out of a vast depth had been built up by generations of polyzoa,
so she would see that on the earth, through illimitable ages, successive
generations of animals and plants had left in stone their imperishable
records: and at the top of the series she would meet the thinking,
breathing creature known as man. Infinitely little as is the architect
of the atoll in proportion to the earth on which it rests, the polyzoon,
I doubt not, is much larger relatively than is man in proportion to
the vast systems of the Universe, in which he represents an
ultra-microscopic atom less ten thousand times than the tiniest of the
"gay motes that people the sunbeams." Yet, with colossal audacity, this
thinking atom regards himself as the anthropocentric pivot around which
revolve the eternal purposes of the Universe. Knowing not whence he
came, why he is here, or whither he is going, man feels himself of
supreme importance, and certainly is of interest--to himself. Let us
hope that he has indeed a potency and importance out of all proportion
to his somatic insignificance. We know of toxins of such strength that
an amount too infinitesimal to be gauged may kill; and we know that
"the unit adopted in certain scientific work is the amount of emanation
produced by one million-millionth of a grain of radium, a quantity
which itself has a volume of less than a million-millionth of a cubic
millimetre and weighs a million million times less than an exceptionally
delicate chemical balance will turn to" (Soddy, 1912). May not man be
the radium of the Universe? At any rate let us not worry about his size.
For us he is a very potent creature, full of interest, whose mundane
story we are only beginning to unravel.

Civilization is but a filmy fringe on the history of man. Go back as far
as his records carry us and the story written on stone is of yesterday
in comparison with the vast epochs of time which modern studies demand
for his life on the earth. For two millions (some hold even three
millions) of years man lived and moved and had his being in a world very
differ