RELIGIOUS RETROSPECT AND PROSJ ECT. 843 



not know enough of the other divisions even rudely to 

 conceive the extent and complexity of their phenomena ; and 

 supposing him to have adequate knowledge of each, yet 

 he is unable to think of them as a whole. Wider and stronger 

 intellect may hereafter help him to form a vague conscious 

 ness of them in their totality. We may say that just as rxii 

 undeveloped musical faculty, able only to appreciate a simple 

 melody, cannot grasp the variously-entangled passages and 

 harmonies of a symphony, which in the minds of composer 

 and conductor are unified into involved musical effects awaken 

 ing far greater feeling than is possible to the musically uncul 

 tured ; so, by future more evolved intelligences, the course of 

 things now apprehensible only in parts may be apprehensible 

 all together, with an accompanying feeling as much beyond 

 that of the present cultured man, as his feeling is beyond 

 that of the savage. 



And this feeling is not likely to be decreased but to be 

 increased by that analysis of knowledge which, while forcing 

 him to agnosticism, yet continually prompts him to imagine 

 some solution of the Great Enigma which he knows cannot 

 be solved. Especially must this be so when he remembers 

 that the very notions, origin, cause and purpose, are relative 

 notions belonging to human thought, which are probably 

 irrelevant to the Ultimate Eeality transcending human 

 thought ; and when, though suspecting that explanation is a 

 word without meaning when applied to this Ultimate lieality, 

 he yet feels compelled to think there must be an explana 

 tion. 



But one truth must grow ever clearer the truth that 

 there is an Inscrutable Existence everywhere manifested, to 

 which he can neither find nor conceive either beginning or 

 end. Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious 

 the more they are thought about, there will remain the one 

 absolute certainty, that he is ever in presence of an Infinite 

 and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed. 



