ABSTRACT
We come now to an inquiry which proceeds in the opposite order from that of our initial survey of the universe. In that survey we were attempting to be as far as possible impartial and impersonal; it was our aim to come as near as our capacities permit to describing the world as it might appear to an observer of miraculous perceptive powers viewing it from without. We were concerned with what we know rather than with what we know. We attempted to use an order in our description which ignored, for the moment, the fact that we are part of the universe, and that any account which we can give of it depends upon its effects upon ourselves, and is to this extent inevitably anthropocentric. We accordingly began with the system of galaxies, and passed on, by stages, to our own galaxy, our own little solar system, our own tiny planet, the infinitesimal specks of life upon its surface, and finally, as the climax of insignificance, the bodies and minds of those odd beings that have imagined themselves the lords of creation and the end and aim of the whole vast cosmos.
