Over The Whole Earth- This Infinitely Small

Every Time We Walk Along A Beach Some Ancient Urge Disturbs Us So That We Find Ourselves Shedding Shoes And Garments Or Scavenging Among Seaweed And Whitened Timbers Like The Homesick Refugees Of A Long War... Mostly The Animals Understand Their Roles, But Man, By Comparison, Seems Troubled By A Message That, It Is Often Said, He Cannot Quite Remember Or Has Gotten Wrong... Bereft Of Instinct, He Must Search Continually For Meanings... Man Was A Reader Before He Became A Writer, A Reader Of What Coleridge Once Called The Mighty Alphabet Of The Universe.

Out Of The Choked Devonian Waters Emerged Sight And Sound And The Music That Rolls Invisible Through The Composer's Brain. They Are There Still In The Ooze Along The Tideline, Though No One Notices. The World Is Fixed, We Say: Fish In The Sea, Birds In The Air. But In The Mangrove Swamps By The Niger, Fish Climb Trees And Ogle Uneasy Naturalists Who Try Unsuccessfully To Chase Them Back To The Water. There Are Things Still Coming Ashore.

If You Cannot Bear The Silence And The Darkness, Do Not Go There; If You Dislike Black Night And Yawning Chasms, Never Make Them Your Profession. If You Fear The Sound Of Water Hurrying Through Crevices Toward Unknown And Mysterious Destinations, Do Not Consider It. Seek Out The Sunshine. It Is A Simple Prescription. Avoid The Darkness.

In The End, Science As We Know It Has Two Basic Types Of Practitioners. One Is The Educated Man Who Still Has A Controlled Sense Of Wonder Before The Universal Mystery, Whether It Hides In A Snail's Eye Or Within The Light That Impinges On That Delicate Organ. The Second Kind Of Observer Is The Extreme Reductionist Who Is So Busy Stripping Things Apart That The Tremendous Mystery Has Been Reduced To A Trifle, To Intangibles Not Worth Troubling One's Head About.

In The Days Of The Frost Seek An Minor Sun.