These new friends confirmed this and pointed out that the influence of the various worlds and their inhabitants could always be felt most in their own particular family; it did not necessarily follow that the characteristics of one system were repeated _en bloc_ in all others throughout the universe. They also explained that if it were possible to visit all the systems in the universe, it would be found in each case that all conditions were changed; gravity was not the same, chemicals were not governed by the same laws, substances and cohesion of atoms and particles were under laws suited to them in their special local relation to other things, and though throughout the whole of creation a certain general law might and did prevail, the countless millions of units which formed the one grand whole were controlled and built up by that which would, in each individual case, be best suited to enable that one unit to fulfil its allotted task; that nothing in creation was wasted, and that each world, each unit, was as necessary to the proper adjustment of the whole, and was as important to the completion of the great work of creation, as was one small wheel to the correct movement of a clock. What that scheme is no mind other than that of the Creator can grasp; but every single star and grain of meteoric dust in space is needed to work it out. And all the movements in space, where orbits are within orbits and worlds innumerable rush on with various speeds, clashing when necessary, missing when necessary, all in regular motion like a well-balanced clock; nothing wanting, not a speck of dust superfluous, show the work of God proceeding, unerringly, unceasingly; in limitless space above, around, below, where there is neither height, nor depth, nor length, nor breadth that does not end as remote in eternity as the beginning, and at the mere thought the mind experiences a crushing feeling of oppression at such a declaration by the heavens of the Glory of God. Never before had the travellers got such a close insight into the wondrous Scheme of Creation, and never before had they met creatures higher than found in any part of the solar system, or any unlike themselves. Had any one told them that beings could be hairy and unclothed and not be degraded, they would have been held in derision, as suggesting an impossibility; yet here were people before their very eyes, unlike any seen elsewhere, not greatly different in form, manner or speech, but with soft, hairy skins, glossy as silk, every motion full of grace and beauty, unclothed and sexless yet not knowing it, their thoughts and actions guileless as those of children; god-like in figure and movement, and withal a god-like mind, and a frank love and trustfulness that were in themselves a protecting hedge from outer evil, had there been any.