. . Even
three or four centuries.'
'There may be, and probably are, stars from which Noah might
be seen stepping into the Ark, Eve listening to the
temptation of the serpent, or that older race, eating the
oysters and leaving the shell-heaps behind them, when the
Baltic was an open sea' (Froude's 'Science of History').
Facts and figures such as these simply stupefy us. They
vaguely convey the idea of something immeasurably great, but
nothing further. They have no more effect upon us than words
addressed to some poor 'bewildered creature, stunned and
paralysed by awe; no more than the sentence of death to the
terror-stricken wretch at the bar. Indeed, it is in this
sense that the sceptic uses them for our warning.
'Seit Kopernikus,' says Schopenhauer, 'kommen die Theologen
mit dem lieben Gott in Verlegenheit.' 'No one,' he adds,
'has so damaged Theism as Copernicus.' As if limitation and
imperfection in the celestial mechanism would make for the
belief in God; or, as if immortality were incompatible with
dependence. Des Cartes, for one, (and he counts for many,)
held just the opposite opinion.
Our sun and all the millions upon millions of suns whose
light will never reach us are but the aggregation of atoms
drawn together by the same force that governs their orbit,
and which makes the apple fall.
