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Show 81. all the colors of Light, although we say that the latter creature is of a higher form of life? All of these varied forms, high and low, are simply portions of God, radiated from Him as a sun, and made terrestrial by the clothes they wear, and by the modifications of a corresponding kind in the God essence itself. The more extensively terrestrial a being becomes, the higher it ranks among its fellows, and the most terrestrial being is the one that contains all the others, that has, indeed, flowed through all the others and borne away parts of them, building them into itself. Such a being is man, who has flowed down through other forms of being and absorbed and assimilated portions of them into himself, thus becoming a microcosm most richly Divine because most richly terrestrial, just as a river becomes rich by flowing on and on through varied climes and rocks, through many mountains and vales, constantly appropriating portions to itself, rising higher in the scale of rivers as it grows rich in the absorbtion of the soils and smaller streams. What an amazing statement this was. Man was a microcosm, in a paradoxical way. He was the highest creature because he absorbed so much of Nature, and he was the lowest because his spirit was so heavily clothed by his descent through history. Muir's meditation suggests that he had begun to absorb and apply a kind of Darwinian thinking to Man. Evolution reminded him of his own membership in a community of all things, the community |
