People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance.

This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact.

For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire.

A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue.

He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still.
But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness.