Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1879 — Infinitesimally Small Man. [ARTICLE]

Infinitesimally Small Man.

New York Herald. The last lecture of the course with whioh Professor Procter to instructing aud delighting astonished thousands was uprn the vastnees of time. Ths subject is one upon which many men think they know something. The time during which the ash barrels of certain city districts remain unemptied is often pronounced vast, and that in which thousands of creditors of defunct saving banks have waited for dividends to vaster, but neither approaches in duration the time consumed by the eartbin getting ready for business. We are told that for a trifle of a hundred million years the world has been dependent upon tne sun for its light and heat, but that previously it had speut more than three hundred million years in cooling down to a degree which justified it in accepting assistance from its nearest warm-hearted neighbor. Three hundred million years to quite a respectable amount of time to eonsume in reducing heat; it to almost as many years as. at his present rateof cooling down Mr.Tilc’en will need in which to l eoover from the blazing indignation induced by the result of the last Presidential campaign. After such vast periods the duration of man, the boasttul “lord of creation,” to 9imply nothing, and man the individual is many thousands of times less, while his assumption that the globe has beeu glowing, wastiug, steaming and cooling for countless cycles and eeousmerely to afford a temporary resting place for a lot of two-footed mites to arrogant to a degree which even a Custom House inspector over a pile of trunks never attained to. Man’s insignificance is further shown by hto manifest inability to prevent the earth one day becoming the mere dingy cinder that the lecturer assures us it must finally be. The earth being a mere speck in the solar system, and the system itself a wee, lonesome cluster of stars whirling on the outer edge of a stystem infinitely greater, it behooves man to be moaest. It matters not whether ha finds the root of hto genealogical tree in Adam or in protoplasm, for the gardener of Eden, with hto nine hundred and thirty years of life, died a mere baby if hto age to to be oompared with that of the still immature of the earth, while protoplasm Itself was, we are told, a mere accidental outcast from -matter. The more Prof. Proctor tells ua the more infinitely small man appears.