But even the most eager scientists have often admitted in my hearing
that they would be surprised if some kind of cow approached them
moving solemnly on four wheels. Wings, fins, flappers, claws,
hoofs, webs, trotters, with all these the fantastic families
of the earth come against us and close around us, fluttering and
flapping and rustling and galloping and lumbering and thundering;
but there is no sound of wheels.
I remember dimly, if, indeed, I remember aright, that in some of
those dark prophetic pages of Scripture, that seem of cloudy purple
and dusky gold, there is a passage in which the seer beholds a violent
dream of wheels. Perhaps this was indeed the symbolic declaration
of the spiritual supremacy of man. Whatever the birds may do above
or the fishes beneath his ship, man is the only thing to steer;
the only thing to be conceived as steering. He may make the birds
his friends, if he can. He may make the fishes his gods, if he chooses.
But most certainly he will not believe a bird at the masthead;
and it is hardly likely that he will even permit a fish at the helm.
He is, as Swinburne says, helmsman and chief: he is literally
the Man at the Wheel.
The wheel is an animal that is always standing on its head;
only "it does it so rapidly that no philosopher has ever found
out which is its head." Or if the phrase be felt as more exact,
it is an animal that is always turning head over heels and progressing
by this principle.
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