questions should have answer,--for nothing is without a meaning,--
and nothing ever HAS BEEN, or ever WILL BE, without a purpose?

In this world, apparently, and according to our surface knowledge of
all physical and mental phenomena, it would seem that the chief
business of humanity is to continually re-create itself. Man exists-
-in his own opinion--merely to perpetuate Man. All the wonders of
the earth, air, fire and water,--all the sustenance drawn from the
teeming bosom of Nature,--all the progress of countless
civilisations in ever recurring and repeated processional order,--
all the sciences old and new,--are solely to nourish, support,
instruct, entertain and furnish food and employment for the tiny
two-legged imp of Chance, spawned (as he himself asserts) out of gas
and atoms.

Yet,--as he personally declares, through the mouth of his modern
science,--he is not of real importance withal. The little planet on
which he dwells would, to all seeming, move on in its orbit in the
same way as it does now, without him. In itself it is a pigmy world
compared with the rest of the solar system of which it is a part.
Nevertheless, the fact cannot be denied that his material
surroundings are of a quality tending to either impress or to
deceive Man with a sense of his own value. The world is his oyster
which he, with the sword of enterprise, will open,--and all his
natural instincts urge him to perpetuate himself in some form or
other incessantly and without stint. Why? Why is his existence
judged to be necessary? Why should he not cease to be? Trees would
grow, flowers would bloom, birds would sing, fish would glide
through the rivers and the seas,--the insect and animal tribes of
field and forest would enjoy their existence unmolested, and the