For The First Time In Four Billion

One (practitioner Of Science) 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 Freedom To Create Is Somehow Linked With Facility Of Access To Those Obscure Regions Below The Conscious Mind.

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.

It Is Commonplace Of All Religious Thought That The Man Seeking Visions And Insight Must Go Apart From His Fellows And Live For A While In The Wilderness. If He Is Of Proper Sort, He Will Return With A Message. It May Not Be A Message From The God He Set Out To Seek But Even If He Has Failed In That Particular, He Will Have Had A Vision Or Seen A Marvel And These Are Always Worth Listening To Or Thinking About.

Certainly Science Has Moved Forward. But When Science Progresses, It Often Opens Vaster Mysteries To Our Gaze. Moreover, Science Frequently Discovers That It Must Abandon Or Modify What It Once Believed. Sometimes It Ends By Accepting What It Has Previously Scorned.