28 THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE : 



stead of in its remotest circumference? In that direction evidently, if we 

 could penetrate, we should expect to find, not a shadowy intellectual 

 generalisation, but the very opposite of that an intense immutable fee/mg 

 or state, an axiomatic condition of Being. Is it possible, that here, blaz- 

 ing like a sun (if we could only see it and the sun is its allegory in the 

 physical world), there exists within us absolutely such a thing the one 

 fact in the universe of which all else are shadows, to which everything has 

 relation, andjxmnd which, itself unanalysable, all thought circles and all 

 phenomena stand as indirect modes of expression ? 



Is it possible ? That is the question the question which each one of 

 us has to solve. At any rate, let us throw this out as a suggestion. Let 

 us suggest that as we have got nothing satisfactory by cleaning the sense- 

 element out of phenomena, we should take the opposite course and put 

 as much sense into them as we can ! 



" Facts " are, at least, half feelings. Let us acknowledge this and not 

 empty the feeling out of them, but deepen and enlarge that which we 

 already have in them. Who knows whether we have ever seen the blue 

 sky ? Who knows whether we have ever seen each other ? It it not a 

 commonplace to say that one man sees in the common objects of Nature 

 what another is wholly unconscious of? "The primrose on the river's 

 brim a yellow primrose is to him and nothing more." To what extent 

 may the facts of Nature thus be deepened and made more substantial to 

 us and whither will this process lead us ? 



Do we not want to feel more, not less, in the psesence of phenomena 

 to enter into a living relation with the blue sky, and the incense-laden 

 air, and the plants and the animals nay, even with poisonous and hurt- 

 ful things to have a keener sense of their hurtfulness ? Is it not a strange 

 kind of science that which wakes the mind to pursue the shadows of 

 things, but dulls the senses to the reality of them which causes a man to 

 try to bottle the pure atmosphere of heaven and then to shut himself in a 

 gas-reeking, ill-ventilated laboratory while he analyses it ; or allows him 

 to vivisect a dog, unconscious that he is blaspheming the pure and holy 

 relation between man and the animals in doing so ? Surely the man of 

 Science (in its higher sense, that is) should be lynx-eyed as an Indian, 

 keen-scented as a hound with all senses and feelings trained by constant 

 use and a pure and healthy life in close contact with Nature, and with a 

 heart beating in sympathy with every creature. Such a man would have 

 at command, so to speak, the key-board of the universe ; but the me- 

 chanical, unhealthy, indoor-living student is he not really ignorant of 

 the facts ? Certainly, since he has not felt them, he is. 



The process of the true Science consists first in the naming and defin- 

 ing of phenomena (i.e., the facts of human consciousness), and secondly, 

 in the discovery of the true relation of these phenomena to each other ; 

 and since the definitions of phenomena and their relations keep varying 

 from the standpoint of the observer, the process evidently involves all ex- 



