THE GODLIKE DEDUCTIONS

of Kepler, Halley, and Newton.  The affairs of this world are managed in the light of history.  It is technically called precedent.  There is yet no history of astronomy.  In the desired actual placing of the present positions of the stars there would be a record which, 25,868 years hence, would enable the observer of those times to accurately measure movements of the earth now beyond mortal ken for lack of history.  By the character of those movements, the force, speed, heat, and

OTHER QUALITIES OF GRAVITATION

might possibly be determined.  Now I cannot connect the idea of selfishness with this view of the aspirations of humanity.  Proctor and Airy absolutely know that they will be forgotten so far out in on-coming time, but still they drudge away, in the belief that man can only acquire knowledge of God’s works as the coral reef attains continental proportions—­that is, by the infinitesimal contributions of countless unselfish individualities.  They are desirous that man should some day know the truth.  Is there any unselfishness in the aspiration?

THE ATHEIST

says:  “First and last of all, we have no idea of anything beyond, above, or superior to these curious bodies of ours.  The highest flight of genius in art, religion, or invention has never reached beyond the body of man.”  These statements are false.  They should not be accepted by anybody as true, for they tend to a lower grade of existence.  They lead the pardoned convict back to his hatching-house of crime.  Philosophy of this kind forgets the “still small voice.”

THE NOBLE “IT BEHOOVETH ME!”

rings in every intelligent mind.  “I have not done that which I ought to have done; I therefore am disturbed and in unrest.”  Where does this thought come from?  Why do I sit in judgment on myself?  The atheist says it is selfishness.  A peculiar selfishness is that voice of duty which cries to those whom we rightly call good to go forth to the bedside of the distressed, is it not?  At the corner of Lake and Paulina streets, in Chicago, a man, his wife, and his child were nearly burned to death.  The child died, and perhaps they all died.  They were taken to the hospital.  The next day a thrifty landlord tumbled their goods down-stairs to the sidewalk.

WHAT WAS IT IN MY SOUL

which, when I saw the young barbarians all at play tearing and destroying those meagre comforts, cried out so sharply:  “O, ignoble! you do not lift your finger to succor this poor man!  Have shame upon you!” Why is it that that voice still sounds in my ears?  Surely it is not selfishness.  Listen to a short colloquy: 

Immanuel Kant—­Duty! wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, nor flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up thy naked law to the soul, and so extorting for thyself always reverence, if not obedience; before whom all appetites are dumb, however secretly they rebel; whence thy original?