There are mysteries in our nature, the nature we think we know--shall there be none in that which we know not?
Worlds die, to live again when, after millions of ages, the conditions become once more favourable to life, and why should not a man?
We are creatures of the world, we reflect its every light and shadow, we rejoice in its rejoicing, its every feature has a tiny parallel in us.
Why should not our fate be as its fate, and its fate is so far as we know eternal.

It may change from gas to chaos, from chaos to active life, from active life to seeming death.

Then it may once more pass into its elements, and from those elements back again to concrete being, and so on for ever, always changing, but always the same.

So much for nature's allegory.

It is not a perfect analogy, for Man is a thing apart from all things else; it may be only a hint or a type, but it is something.
"Now to come to the question of our religion.