ERNST HAECKEL

OTHING seems to me better adapted than this monistic per

spective to give us the proper standard and the broad outlook which we need in the solution of the vast enigmas that surround us. It not only clearly indicates the true place of man in nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man's supreme importance and arrogance with which he sets himself apart from the illimitable universe, and exalts himself to the position of its most valuable element. This boundless presumption of conceited man has misled him into making himself "the image of God," claiming an "eternal life" for his ephemeral personality, and imagining that he possesses unlimited "freedom of will." The ridiculous imperial folly of Caligula is but a special form of man's arrogant assumption of divinity. Only when we have abandoned this untenable illusion, and taken up the correct cosmological perspective, can we hope to reach the solution of the "Riddle of the Universe."

-THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE

ERNST HAECKEL

HERE was a man, once upon a day, who
lived in East Aurora and kept a store.
He sold everything from cough syrup to
blue ribbon; and some of the things he
sold on time to philosophers who sat on
nail kegs every evening, and settled the
coal strike.

And in due course of time the store-
keeper compromised with his creditors,
at twenty-nine cents on the dollar.
Some say the man went busted a-pur-
pose to quit business and get out of
East Aurora. And he himself generally
allowed the opinion to gain ground in
later years that he had planned his life,
from start to finish, thus proving the
supremacy of the will.

Yet others there be, and men of worth
and social standing in the village-known
for miles up the creek as persons of pro-
bity-who claim that it was too much
confidence in the Genus Smart-Setter,
and trotting horses at the County Fairs,
that made it possible for our friend to
avail himself of the Bankruptcy Act.

Still others, too inert to follow the winding ways of a strange career and give reasons, dispose of the matter by

LITTLE JOURNEYS

saying, "Providence!"-rolling their eyes upward, then walking out, leaving the wordy contestants humiliated and undone.

It will be seen that I am interested in this chapter of Ancient History,-and in truth I myself occasionally ornament the nail kegs. I claim that it was neither Providence nor astute planning that mapped this man's course, but Providence, Planning and Luck; and I silence the adversary, for the time, by citing these facts:

Very shortly after Providence and the sheriff of Erie county-whose name, by the way, was Grover Cleveland-had disposed of the East Aurora grocery, our friend met a man in Buffalo who had a wonderful secret, a sweeping scar on his chin, and nothing else worth mentioning.

This man secured his assets in Germany; he got them while attending the University of Jena.

The secret was gotten by an understanding with a professor; the scar was received through a misunderstanding with a student.

The secret was a plan by which you could make glu-
cose from corn.

In Germany it was only a laboratory experiment, be-
cause there was no corn in Europe to speak of.
Here we had corn to burn, since in that very year the
farmers of Iowa were using corn for fuel.

Glucose is the active saccharine principle in maize,
but it does not become active until the corn is treated
chemically in a certain way, just as honey is not