The self-glorifying instinct of the human mind has resented this negative conclusion, and for long clung to the Ptolemaic idea that the earth was no mere planet among a crowd of others, but was the centre of the universe; and that the sun and all the stars were subsidiary to it. A Ptolemaic idea clings to some of us still—not now as regards the planet, but as regards man; and we, insignificant creatures, with senses only just open to the portentous meaning of the starry sky, presume—some of us—to deny the existence of higher powers and higher knowledge than our own. We are accustomed to be careful as to what we assert; we are liable to be unscrupulous as to what we deny. It is possible to find people who, knowing nothing or next to nothing of the Universe, are prepared to limit existence to that of which they have had experience, and to measure the cosmos in terms of their own understanding. Their confidence in themselves, their shut minds and self-satisfied hearts, are things to marvel at. The fact is that no glimmer of a conception of the real magnitude and complexity of existence can ever have illuminated their cosmic view.
XI
IMMANENCE
Q. 11. What caused and what maintains existence?
A. Of our own knowledge we are unable to realise the meaning of origination or of maintenance; all that we ourselves can accomplish in the physical world is to move things into desired positions, and leave them to act on each other. Nevertheless our effective movements are all inspired by thought, and so we conceive that there must be some Intelligence immanent in all the processes of nature, for they are not random or purposeless, but organised and beautiful.
CLAUSE XI
Origin
We cannot conceive the origin of any fundamental existence. We can describe the beginning of any particular object in its present shape, but its substance always existed in some other shape previously; and nothing really either springs into being or ceases to exist. A cloud or dew becomes visible, and then evaporates, seeming to spring into being and then vanish away; but as water vapour it had a past history and will have a future, both apparently without limit. In our own case, and in the case of any live thing, the history is unknown to us; but ultimate origin or absolute beginning, save of individual collocations, is unthinkable.
The truth that science teaches, on the one hand, is that everything is a perpetual flux,