interest in the cause of things. While watching the water of the falls from Prospect Park, he said: "Mama, who pours the water over Niagara Falls?" We may imagine similar questions being asked by the American Indian ages previously, and answered in terms of "Gitchie Manitou, the Mighty." From this beginning, the boy during the next three years seemed to be trying to make himself clear upon the question of where things come from originally, and who keeps the world going. "Who makes the birds?" "Who made the very first bird?" "Who fixt their wings so they can fly?" "Who takes care of the birds and rabbits in the winter when snow is on the ground?" "Who makes the grass grow?" "Who makes the trees?" "Who makes them shed their leaves and then get them back again?" "Who makes it thunder?" "Who put the moon in the sky?" "Who made the whole world?" "Who made people?" "Who made me?" "Does God make everything?" "Who made God?" "Was God already made?" "Is God everywhere?" Such were the questions asked again and again, with all sorts of comments in reply to the answers that were given him. The question of what is the origin of things was seldom or never asked. It was always who; and when the personal cause he was seeking was named "God" in connection with numerous objects, he finally generalized by asking if God makes everything.—George E. Dawson, "The Child and His Religion."
(325)
Causative Sense Instructive—See Automatic Experience.
CAUSES CURED
A bitter fountain comes rushing down the
mountain side, and drinking thereof, the
people of the city are poisoned. Along comes
a man who says: "I will build a lime factory
just above the city, and pour a stream of
lime-water into the bitter fountain." Jesus'
method was simpler. Go higher up, into the
mountain of God, and strike the rock, that
sweet waters may gush forth, to flow through
the land, carrying health and happiness to
all that stand upon the banks of this river
of water of life. Jesus reformed institutions
by reforming human nature. He was a
fundamental thinker. He dealt with causes.—N.
D. Hillis.
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Caution in Revealing Truth—See Truth Fatal.
CEMETERY, THE EARTH AS A
Again and again this old poetic fancy of
the earth as one great cemetery buried several
times deep with dead men, women and children,
has been refuted by figures. But great
is the error and will prevail, unless the truth
be well and steadily upheld. The population
of the earth is now about 1,500,000,000. Suppose
the human race to have existed for
6,000 years and you have sixty centuries. In
each century you may count three generations
of mankind, or one hundred and eighty
generations in all, each being a generation
of 1,500,000,000. Now, lay out a cemetery
for one generation. It will be a huge estimate
to give to every man, woman, and
child a grave five feet by two, or ten square.
You want for your graveyard, then, 15,000,000,000
square feet of ground. A square
mile contains something less than 28,000,000
square feet. You want, then, a graveyard
fifty-five miles long by ten wide for your
whole generation. Now multiply this by
one hundred and eighty and you have your
burial-ground for 6,000 years of mankind.
That is, a strip of land, 1,800 miles long by
55 miles wide will be ample. In other words,
a cemetery containing 100,000 square miles
would be sufficient for the entire human race
to lie side by side. The estimate which I
have given you of continuous population is
obviously enormously large. The estimate
of the size of each grave is very large. A
strictly correct estimate would reduce the
size of the required cemetery more than
one-half. But enormous as it is, you could
lay out your burial-ground for all men who
have lived on earth, so that they could lie
side by side in Arizona or in California, or
you could lay it out in Texas large enough
to accommodate the race of 6,000 years past,
and also the race for 6,000 years yet to come,
all sleeping in the soil of that one State of
this Union. But some one says the race of
man has been on the earth 100,000 years.
That is a pure imagination and there is not,
so far as I know, a fact on which to rest it.
But suppose it is true, and suppose the population
always what it is now, you have provided
for 6,000 years of it. You want nearly
seventeen times as large a cemetery for the
generations of a thousand centuries. That
is, you want 1,700,000 square miles in it. Lay
it out whenever you please, 1,700 miles long
by 1,000 miles wide. It is but part of the
United States. And so enormously large
have been the rough estimates thus far used,
it is safe to say that if the human race has
