206 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



THE VOICES OF NATURE. Let us draw 

 together the threads of this simple argument, 

 which is meant to show how, from the nature of 

 the case, the progress of science must influence 

 the growth of the religious mood. Nature is so 

 great perhaps infinitely great that we need 

 not be too much afraid of verbal personification, 

 nor of speaking, for purposes of convenience, 

 of the three voices of Nature when we simply 

 mean the impulses that come from the threefold 

 practical) emotional, and intellectual relation 

 between Man and Nature. We are thinking, of 

 course, of wordless voices, as is said with sub- 

 lime contradiction in the nineteenth Psalm: "Day 

 unto day is welling forth speech, and night unto 

 night is breathing out knowledge; yet there is 

 no speech, and there are no words; their voice 

 has no audible sound, yet it resonates over all 

 the earth." 



We have hinted at the historical fact that in 

 listening to these voices, men have often passed 

 into religious experience, almost by a kind of 

 coercion. When a man after extreme struggle 

 is utterly baffled practically, he may kneel in 

 prayer; when a man is penetratingly thrilled with 

 emotion he may be borne by its ecstasy into wor- 

 ship; and when a man at the end of his scientific 

 tether is entirely unsatisfied with his formulae 

 necessarily as cold as they are true he may 



