A Japanese miscellany - University of Oregon

304 Japanese Miscellany
planet ? Of course, were he to study that phe-
nomenon in detail, somewhat as we study fer-
ments under the lens, he would not see the smile
of the babe change instantaneously to the laughter
of the skull ; — but I fancy that whatever might
psychologically happen, between the first smile of
rosy flesh and the last dull grin of bone, would
remain for him as indistinguishable as the gnat's
ten or fifteen thousand wing-beats per second
remain for us. I doubt whether the God of a
system, or even of a single world, could sympa-
thize with our emotions any more than we our-
selves can sympathize with the life that thrills in
a droplet of putrid water. . . .
But what is this human creature that, in the
sight of a God, might seem to rise from earth
merely to weep and laugh one moment in the
light, ere crumbling back to clay again ? A form
evolved, in the course of a hundred million years,
from out some shapeless speck of primordial
slime. But this knowledge of the evolution nowise
illuminates the secret of the life in itself, —
the secret of the sentiency struggling against de-
struction through all those million centuries,
ever contriving and building, to baffle death, more
—