30 THE UNFATHOMED UNIVERSE 



offered by philosophy and by theology have often seemed 

 unconvincing because imposed from without, instead of aris- 

 ing in minds saturated with the actualities of the case. It 

 goes without saying that there have been poets, philosophers, 

 and theologians who have seized on the universal elements 

 in Nature which are for all time. It is also obvious that 

 Nature-poems may be literary treasures though they are no 

 longer significant to us in our world-outlook. But what 

 we want to get at is simply this: What counteractives or 

 compensations may there be for those in whom the scientific 

 mood is strong, in whom neither Nature-poem nor ancient 

 Theodicy, neither philosophical idealisation nor fairy tale 

 finds satisfactory organic response. 



To conserve the feeling for Nature at once a satisfaction 

 and a clue we may get what aid we sincerely can from 

 Nature-poetry and other idealisations, we may give greater 

 breadth and depth to our vision by more science, we may 

 exercise ourselves in scientific reconstructions till the Dryad 

 comes back into the tree, but all these are vanity unless we 

 keep close to the concrete realities themselves, and receive 

 with open minds the great primal impressions of immensity, 

 flux, order, intricacy, and beauty, not refusing to be thrilled 

 by what seemed to our more naive predecessors to be immedi- 

 ately divine. 



There is grandeur in the spectacle of the star-strewn sky, 

 so apparently crowded, but there are thousands of worlds 

 unseen for every one our unaided eyes can image, and yet 

 the astronomers tell us that the emptiness of space is its 

 most striking characteristic. We are staggered by the fact 

 that when we look at a Centauri, which lies some ten billions 

 of miles nearer to us than any other known star, we see it, 

 not as it is to-night, but as it was four years ago. We have 



