Preachers and Prophets

Since I have had to pay college tuition for five daughters, I have chosen to play the role of preacher. I preach to all who will listen the gospel of manifest destiny. The destiny which I am preaching is not the expansion of a single nation or of a single species, but the spreading out of life in all its multifarious {134} forms from its confinement on the surface of our small planet to the freedom of a boundless universe. This unimaginably great and diverse universe, in which we occupy one fragile bubble of air, is not destined to remain forever silent. It will one day be buzzing with the murmur of innumerable bees, rustling with the flurry of feathered wings, throbbing with the patter of little human feet. The expansion of life, moving out from Earth into its inheritance, is an even greater theme than the expansion of England across the Atlantic.

Freeman J. Dyson, Infinite in All Directions (2004-07-22)

• colonization
• expansion