Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/197

 *—was indisputable. Human life, very clumsily, tried to reproduce the printed word. Human life was prompted by, and was based upon, printed words—"in the beginning was the Word," precisely as Gospel asserted. Kennaston had it now. Living might become symmetrical, well-plotted, coherent, and rational as living was in books. This was the hope which guided human beings through to-day with anticipation of to-morrow.

Then he perceived that there was no such thing as symmetry anywhere in inanimate nature

It was Ettarre who first pointed out to him the fact, so tremendously apparent when once observed, that there was to be found nowhere in inanimate nature any approach to symmetry. It needed only a glance toward the sky the first clear night to show there was no pattern-work in the arrangement of the stars. Nor were the planets moving about the sun at speeds or distances which bore any conceivable relation to one another. It was all at loose ends. He wondered how he could possibly have been misled by pulpit platitudes into likening this circumambient anarchy to mechanism. To his finicky love of neatness the