You know what happened. The cloud formed into rain and our three drops were washed into a tiny trickling stream. The thin stream of rain ran into a brook, the brook into a river. Soon the three drops were back in the ocean--possibly without knowing it. Shall we some day go rolling back to the ocean of cosmic wisdom whence we came? Is it possible that man is indeed made in the image of God, as drops are made in the ocean's image--the individual men, like the individual drops, being sent forth to do necessary cosmic work through the universe, going back to the ocean after each errand is done, and so going back and forth, forever and ever? That would not be such a mean destiny, we should say. It would certainly be a very democratic form of cosmic government. ---- Inferior men, inferior women, unworthy of comparison with perfect, cosmic wisdom? Not at all. Not inferior men and women, but inferior mediums, inferior brains, bodies and planets through which to work. Is one drop of water inferior to another? Is any inferior to the purest drop in the ocean? No. But one drop runs through the gutter of a stable, another rolls from a mountain spring, a third carries in solution the germ of typhus. But all three came pure from the ocean and all will go back to the ocean pure. DID WE ONCE LIVE ON THE MOON? AND SHALL WE MOVE ON TO THE SUN SOME FINE DAY? The most interesting questions are such as these: Whence did we come? Whither are we going? And, by the way, what are we? Are we of any true importance? Are we a permanent part of the universal scheme, privileged to move along through the ages and see the end as we have seen the beginning? Or are we, as advanced science says, merely like the weevil in the biscuit--no part of the Baker's plan? Are we indestructible specks of cosmic intelligence, lighting up and animating one material body after another--never destroyed--or do we play on this earth the passing part of the microbe in the Brie cheese, which gives that cheese its flavor? ---- A great scientist, coldly analyzing the chemical processes essential to the creation of each new human being, scoffs at any possibility of immortality. With the microscope at his eye, he magnifies nature's mysteries; he sums up the investigations of the Hertwig brothers; he discourses learnedly of the nucleolus of the Cytula--or progeny cell. He declares that science is able to watch the creation of a human being, as it watches the progress of a chick in the egg. He asserts that each new creature is merely the result of a chemical process blending qualities of the mother and father. Having a "final beginning," man must have a final end. Man--a mixture of two sets of qualities--has no more chance of immortality than has beer, which is a mixture of malt and hops. Read and think over this cold summing-up of our mean, limited destiny as science farthest advanced now sees it: