When our ancestors communed with their divinities, they did not ask themselves what the names they pronounced really meant; in invoking Varuna, Helios, Athene, Prithvi, and the others, they were satisfied, at least for the time being, since names possess a strange calming property; this unquestioning acquiescence has been bequeathed to us. We are neither more enquiring, more exact, nor more pedantic than the greater part of our ancestors; we speak of angels, for instance, without seeking to fathom their nature, much in the same way as we might mention lords and dukes without troubling ourselves to reflect that the one means “bread-giver” and the other “dux,” or one capable of being a leader of men.
In speaking of the soul, the immortality of the soul, and of religion, we use words which have become common property, and it is not necessary to analyse them in order to feel sure that they represent things which are very real; still we do not strive to understand what these things really are. Thus it happens that words whose meaning is unknown to us or escapes us, are generally those of which we make daily use; we keep to the impression received of them in our childhood, or accepted by current opinion, or with which sentiment invests them, but this is unsatisfactory; we should feel ashamed of not possessing more accurate knowledge than this of geography or arithmetic. On the other hand, there are scientific terms which seem to us so technical that we willingly abandon their use to experts, and yet their meaning can be readily and definitely grasped.
What meaning, for instance, has the word infinite for us, even if taken in its most simple acceptation; this infinite towards which our thoughts travel when we raise our eyes to the skies? Astronomers say to us, “Look at something greater than the greatest possible greatness, that is the infinitely great.” They then quote figures, but these figures of infinite greatness elude our imagination, we repeat them mechanically and only out of respect to the high scientific authority who guarantees the accuracy of the calculations or the value of the appreciation.
A small object, apparently of the size of a homeopathic globule, moves in space, it contains our continents and our oceans, this globule moves in company with other globules of the same nature.
Astronomers speak to us of the millions of miles separating us from the sun, yet this distance dwindles down to nothing as compared with the nearest star, which, we are told, lies twenty millions of millions of miles from our earth. Another stupendous thought is that a ray of light traverses space at the rate of 187,000 miles in a second, and yet it requires three years to reach us.
But this is only a small matter.
More than one thousand millions of such stars have been discovered by our telescopes, and there may be millions of millions of suns within our siderial system which are as yet beyond the reach of our best telescopes; even that siderial system need not be regarded as single within the universe, thousands of millions of similar systems may be recognised in the galaxy or milky way.[53]
Now let us turn our eyes to the infinitely little. One drop of water taken from the ocean contains atoms so small that a grain of the finest dust would seem colossal by the side of them; chemists are now able to ascertain the relative positions of atoms so minute that millions of them can stand upon a needle’s point.
All this we gather from science when—working together with the telescope—it investigates space; and this may still be little compared to what we might see through glasses, which should magnify objects some millions of times more than our best instruments.
The infinite in space has engaged the attention of many thinkers; I will quote from two only, as this infinite, which they studied from different points of view, yet suggests thoughts somewhat alike. Kepler, the discoverer of the laws on which our planetary system is based, said, “My highest wish is to find within the God whom I have found everywhere without.” Kant, the philosopher, to whom the Divine in nature and the Divine in man appeared as transcendent and beyond our cognisance, and who refused to listen to any theological argument tending to prove the existence of God, yet says, “Two things fill me with new and ever growing admiration and awe: the starry firmament above me, and the moral law within me; neither of them is hidden in darkness, I see them both before me, and I connect them directly with the consciousness of my own existence.”[54]