THE UNFATHOMED UNIVERSE 31 



no mental picture of the remoteness of the sun, which is 

 the earth's ^ mother-countiy ', but if the sun were repre- 

 sented in a model by a grain of sand one-hundredth of an 

 inch in diameter, and the earth by a quite invisible speck 

 one inch away, the nearest star would be represented on 

 this scale by another grain of sand some four miles off. 

 One knows indeed that size and distance are in a way the 

 least important distinctions in the world, but just as men 

 often lose their littleness in sojourning among the great 

 mountains, so it is part of the significance of things to us 

 that we belong to a system cast on big lines. We are citizens 

 of no mean city. 



JSTo one supposes that we are divided into scientific, 

 aesthetic, and other parts, and function in bits as it were; 

 or that there is an antithesis, like good and evil, between 

 science and feeling; or that there is any such thing as ' pure 

 perception '. As a matter of fact, as Professor Ritter says, 

 " We know-and-feel, all in one breath, whenever w^e respond 

 in an unsophisticated, natural manner to contacts with men 

 and things" (1911, P- 126). Deeper science may deepen 

 feeling, and deeper feeling may lead to deeper science. We 

 are inclined to agree with Ritter that ^^ we cannot interpret 

 plant and animal life broadly and soundly either in technical 

 science or in common intelligence unless the aesthetic side 

 of our nature joins with the intellectual side in determining 

 our attitude toward the beings we deal with." Progress is 

 to be looked for in correlated, not dissociated development. 

 There is no question of allowing feeling to influence our cal- 

 culations or measurements, for the scientific accounts are 

 open to public inspection and are fortunately audited with 

 severity. But we need not think that the ark of science has 

 such an unstable equilibrium that a touch of imaginative 



