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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
of planets. But it is not a normal outcome of astronomical evolution. It has come into being as an accident, and man is the result of that accident. If the Universe is the creation of any God, the creator did not intend to place man in the picture. Mankind has stolen into the providential scheme. The appearance of man, therefore, is not in accord with the Divine Will; it represents a violation of the law of Providence.
This being the case, is it not absurd that man should claim the credit of being the bearer of some divine mission, for the realisation of which the entire scheme of cosmic evolution was conceived? The physical Universe is obviously not the stage set for the appearance of man as the agent or image or the son of God on earth. Therefore, there cannot be any possible connection between the movement of the heavenly bodies and the events in the life of the two-legged lumps of protoplasm which crawl on the surface of the earth by a sheer accident. I mean the spiritual connection, which is supposed to be the subject of astrological calculations. Material connection, of course, there is, life being the result of a certain physico-chemical organisation of matter.
Life alone is not a fortuitous phenomenon. The solar system, on a minor member of which life has appeared and attained the high level of manhood, itself originated by an accident. In the authoritative opinion of Sir James H. Jeans, the
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