" 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.
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