I refer to your intellectual and spiritual upbringing, because I venture
to wonder if it was in the least like my own. I was brought up, I
rejoice to say, in the bosom of an orthodox Puritan family. I was led
and driven to believe that man was everybody, and that God was
somebody--and that not merely the Sabbath, but the whole universe, was
made for man: that the stars were his bedtime candles, and that the sun
arose to ensure his catching the 8.37 of a morning.

On this belief I acted for many years. Every young man believes that
there is no god but God, and that he is born to be His prophet--though
perhaps that belief is not so common nowadays. I am speaking of many
years ago.

Science, however, has long since changed all that. Those terrible Muses,
geology, astronomy, and particularly biology, have reduced man to a
humility which, if in some degree salutary, becomes in its excess highly
dangerous. Why should one maggot in this great cheese of the world take
itself more seriously than others? Why dream mightily and do bravely if
we are but a little higher than the beasts that perish? Nature cares
nothing about us, and her giant forces laugh at our fancies. The world
has no such meaning as we thought. Poets and saints, deluded by
unhealthy imaginations, have misled us, and it is quite likely that the
wild waves are really saying nothing more important than 'Beecham's
Pills.'

'Give us a definition of life,' I asked a certain famous scientist and
philosopher whom I am privileged to call my friend.

'Nothing easier!' he gaily replied. 'Life is a product of solar energy,
falling upon the carbon compounds, on the outer crust of a particular