32 THE UNFATHOMED UNIVERSE 



insight will upset it. There is no question, on the other 

 hand, of admitting into our feeling for Nature any element 

 that is incongment with our intellectual experience. That 

 way lies sentimentalism or worse. But we need not be too 

 timorous in our anthropomorphism or afraid of exaggerating 

 the wonder and subtlety of Nature. We cannot, for our 

 life's sake, and for the sake of our philosophical reconstruc- 

 tion, afford to lose in scientific analysis what the poets and 

 artists and the lovers of Nature all see. It is intuitively 

 felt, rather than intellectually perceived, the vision of things 

 as totalities, root and all, all in all; neither fancifully, nor 

 mystically, but sympathetically in their wholeness. There 

 is a deep wisdom in Wordsworth's remark in one of his 

 Prefaces: — '' Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all 

 knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the 

 countenance of all science." 



To all those who remind us what " a dubious and vary- 

 ing oracle " feeling has proved to be in the past, we would 

 answer, '' But how often a wise counsellor ! " In an exalted 

 mood many have in the light of feeling made decisions from 

 which the happiness of a lifetime flowed, and it was a 

 wise man who declared that great ideas come from the heart. 

 We mean by feeling in its finer expression the lamp which 

 others have called intuition. It goes out if not tended, and 

 if facts do not form part of its oil the flame will sputter. 

 But it is a light in the region ' beyond science '. As M. 

 Bergson writes, '' Sur notre personnalite, sur notre liberte 

 . . . sur notre origine et peut-etre aussi sur notre destinee, 

 elle projette une lumiere vacillante et faible, mais qui n'en 

 perce pas moins Fobscuritl de la nuit oil nous laisse Fin- 

 telligence." 



The words '' The Unfathomed Universe ", used in the title 



