Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/506



As the astronomers tell us that it is probable that there are in the universe innumerable solar systems besides ours, to each of which myriads of utterly unknown and unseen stars belong, so it is certain that every man, however obscure, however far removed from the general recognition, is one of a group of men impressible for good, and impressible for evil, and that it is in the eternal nature of things that he can not really improve himself without in some degree improving other men.—

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See.

Mutuality—See ; .

Mutuality, True—See.

MYSELF

What unto me is Nature after all? I pass her by and softly go my way. She is the remnant of my little day Upon this beautiful revolving ball.

I am the real being. At my beck, The seeming actual pays its vassalage; I am the reader and the world the page; I fling a halter round old matter's neck.

Glad to be taught of things outside, yet I Find me indifferent to their transient touch; A life's to-day is an eternity Seems not to please my spirit overmuch.

I may not fathom now the end or what The sweat and blood and tragedy may mean; But I can fight the fight and falter not. Above the clouds the hilltops are serene.

So if I stay here years or slip away While yet the early dawn is dim and dark, It matters not. I am that living spark That ever glows 'tho planets have their day. (Text.)

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MYSTERY IN NATURE

What determines which queen shall leave the hive with the swarm? What determines which five thousand out of fifteen thousand worker bees, all apparently similarly stimulated and excited, shall swarm out, and which ten thousand shall stay in? These are questions too hard for us to answer. We may take refuge in Maeterlinck's poetical conception of the "spirit of the hive." Let us say that the "spirit of the hive" decides these things; as well as what workers shall forage and what ones clean house; what bees shall ventilate and what make wax and build comb. Which is simply to say that we don't know what decides all these things. (Text.)—, "Insect Stories."

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MYSTERY IN RELIGION

Here are wood, brass, my hand—any material things. Here are light, electricity, a magnet—things that we all have something to do with. Now let us ask the scientific people to look at them, weigh them, test them, analyze them, describe them—what will they report? Well, part of their report will be this: There is one thing without which all these other things are impossible, without which there could be no wood, no metal, no light, no electric current; and that thing is called ether. This ether is like nothing you have at hand. It is not solid, nor liquid, nor a gas. It does not weigh anything, nor does it move. It is not alive, nor is it capable of division. Yet it is everywhere. It is in the wood, in the brass, in the air. It fills what we call empty space. It is the road by which light travels. It is the medium of electricity. It is the home of magnetism. Well, when the scientist tells us this we can but gasp. It is nothing that we know, yet without it all we know would break down. It can not be seen, nor handled, nor heard, yet without it we could neither see, nor handle, nor hear. It is utterly beyond belief, so strange a bunch of contradictories it is; and yet if we assume it to be real, then and then only can all the things of life which we do know be properly explained.

If in the natural world we follow out carefully all that is before us, if we explore our narrow strip of experience thoroughly, we come to a region getting more and more remote. Send a traveler from Hampstead—he comes back to tell us of India or the Arctic Ocean. Send a scientist out into this world of matter and force, of wood and stone and electricity, and he comes back to tell us of the incredible wonders of the unseen world, of the fathomless mysteries of the ether.

If this is so with material things, how much more is it likely to be so with moral and spiritual things? If it be true of earthly things, how much more of heavenly things? If the findings of science are puzzling, con