CHAP, xi The Problem of Knowledge. 205 



sense, is the Infinite, and in the world made known 

 by Consciousness, is the Divine *\ 



I believe that "the solving word" for the problem 

 as to our knowledge of both the natural and the 

 spiritual worlds, is suggested in a well-known stanza 

 by Goethe, of which the following is a translation. 

 I have inserted some words, marked in brackets, 

 which do not represent anything in the original. 



Were not the eye with light endowed, 

 How could we gaze on sun (or cloud) ? 

 Had we no power Divine within, 

 How could the heavenly glory win 

 Our spirits (and reprove our sin) ? 



We can understand Divine things because there 

 is something Divine in our nature ; because, as 

 Saint Paul said to the Athenians in the words of a 

 poet of their own, we are the offspring of God. 1 And we 

 can understand natural things because we are a part, 

 and, as the doctrine of Evolution teaches, a product, 

 of the world of Nature. Some one has said that the 

 most wonderful thing about the natural world is its 

 comprehensibility by our intellect ; but this is a 

 misconception. The material world, the world of 

 life, and the world of mind, are all wonderful ; but 

 when conscious Intelligence has been evolved in 

 beings which inhabit, and form part of, a universe of 

 matter and force, which exists, moves, and changes, 

 in space and time, it is no additional marvel that 



1 Acts xvii. 28. 



