Now, their sun is the central orb of their Solar system. It consists of a nucleus, it is surrounded by a photosphere and a chromosphere, and has a disease of the face called "spots." The facts remain the same; the mist still rises, the dew still falls, and the canopy of Heaven still spans the two horizons. Whatever the interpretation of these phenomena may be, this at least is certain, that they are still with us. But there is one thing that changes; one thing that cannot remain indifferent to interpretation--even though the facts do not alter,--and that is the soul of man. A million times more sensitive to changes in interpretation than the column of mercury is to changes in the atmosphere, the soul of man rises or falls according to the nobility or the baseness of the meaning which he himself puts into things; and, just as, in this matter, he may be his own regenerator, so, also, may he be his own assassin. [1] Delivered at University College on Dec. 8th, 1910. [2] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 187: "The time of kings has gone by, because people are no longer worthy of them. They do not wish to see the symbol of their ideal in a king, but only a means to their own ends." See also _Z._, III, LVI. 1. The World "without form" and "void." For, in the beginning, the world was "without form" and "void," things surrounded man; but they had no meaning. His senses received probably the same number of impressions as they do now--and perhaps more--but these impressions had no co-ordination and no order. He could neither calculate them, reckon with them, nor communicate[3] them to his fellows. Before he could thus calculate, reckon with, and communicate the things of this world, a vast process of simplification, co-ordination, organization and ordering had to be undertaken, and this process, however arbitrarily it may have been begun, was one of the first needs of thinking man. Everything had to be given some meaning, some interpretation, and some place; and in every case, of course, this interpretation was in the terms of man, this meaning was a human meaning, and this place was a position relative to humanity. Perhaps no object is adequately defined until the relation to it of every creature and thing in the universe has been duly discovered and recorded.[4] But no such transcendental meaning of a thing preoccupied primeval man. All he wished was to understand the world, in order that he might have power over it, reckon with it, and communicate his impressions concerning it. And, to this end, the only relation of a thing that he was concerned with was its relation to himself. It must be given a name, a place, an order, a meaning--however arbitrary, however fanciful, however euphemistic. Facts were useless, chaotic, bewildering, meaningless, before they had been adjusted,[5] organized, classified, and interpreted in accordance with the desires, hopes, aims and needs of a particular kind of man.