Yet whenever I see a frog’s eye low in the water warily ogling the
shoreward landscape, I always think inconsequentially of those twiddling mechanical eyes that mankind manipulates nightly from a thousand observatories. Someday, with a telescopic lens an acre in extent, we are going to see something
not to out liking, some looming shape outside there across the great pond of space.Whenever I catch a frog’s eye I am aware of this, but I do not find it depressing. I stand quite still and try hard not to move or lift a hand since it would o
nly frighten him. And standing thus it finally comes to me that this is the most enormous extension of vision of which life is capable: the projection of itself into other lives.
This is the lonely magnificent power of humanity. It is, far more than any spatial adventure, the
supreme epitome of the rea
ching out.
