As the dull mind of the field-plodder now looks toward the great
cities--toward the vast movement outside his own little life--so
shall men look away from this little, limited, but by that time
well regulated, planet, to the mysteries and the grandeurs of the
worlds outside.
Life will be complete in those coming days. Men will look back
with pity to the time when they quarreled about little metal
money tokens, locked each other up in jail, or choked each other
to death legally.
Let us hope and believe that we may come back then to share the
pleasure of the world's mature days, since we are sentenced to
exist here to-day in the greasy, clammy period of struggle and
half-bakedness. ----
While the infant sits drawing milk, with never a dream of solid
food, the teeth are growing beneath its gums. And while we crawl
around here now, with no conception of our future state, some of
the forces at work among us are preparing for the days when real
life shall begin. Among these forces you may count the
constructors of the great cosmic eye--the huge telescope that is
now building in Paris. Compared with all other exhibits at the
Paris Fair, that great instrument will be as a giant among
babies, a Corliss engine among children's toys.
It is the precursor of the great instruments which in the future
will take man on his travels through space.
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