28 THE UNFATHOMED UNIVERSE 



no doubt that the scientific method is antipodal to feeling, and 

 that scientific methods and systems are almost hostile. So we 

 tend to get further away from '' an original relation to 

 ISTature ", such as many children have, such as Emerson re- 

 ferred to when he said : ^' The earlier generations saw God 

 face to face ; we through their eyes. Why should not we also 

 enjoy an original relation to Nature ? " 



It might be thought that the more science grows the more 

 feeling should deepen. " All knowledge," Coleridge said, 

 '"' begins and ends with wonder, but the first wonder is the 

 child of ignorance, while the second wonder is the parent 

 of adoration." Truly progressive science should enrich our 

 feeling, for it gives to our vision depth, order, connectedness, 

 and continuity, and makes the whole world more translucent 

 and more full of meaning. But we have, after all, to admit 

 that the light of science is as cold as it is clear. Keats was 

 right in lamenting that the rainbow had never been quite 

 the same, in spite of what Wordsworth said, since Newton 

 looked at it with his discerning eye. No doubt that for any 

 wonder Science dissipates, she gives us twain; but they are 

 not the old homely wonders. No doubt, though Science is 

 ever pushing the curtain back a little further, so that half- 

 wonders disappear, the wonder remains. But the funda- 

 mental mysteriousness of Nature is cold comfort for the 

 loss of the wonder of the rainbow and of the Northern Lights, 

 of the flower in the crannied wall and of the way of the 

 eagle in the air. 



The fact is that it is rather the scientific mood than science 

 that is opposed to feeling. For the eyes of the investigator 

 have neither laughter nor tears. In the actual work of 

 science, emotion is dangerous. For scientific purposes we 

 must look out of one window only and with all possible con- 



