26 THE UNFATHOMED UNIVERSE 



abundance of brain-stretching theoretical puzzles and we 

 eagerly tackle them; there are more worlds to conquer and 

 we do not let the sword sleep in our hand; but how does 

 it stand with feeling? Nature is beautiful, gladdening, 

 awesome, mysterious, wonderful, as ever, but do we feel it 

 as our forefathers did ? 



What is this feeling for Nature? It may be a simple 

 restfulness, such as Darwin once spoke of when for the 

 moment he laid aside his questionings; it may be a keen 

 aesthetic joy; it may be the thrill of a starry night; it may 

 be the pleasure of seeing trust and affection in a dog's eyes ; 

 it may be the response our heart makes in spring when we 

 hear the wild geese passing overhead on their northward 

 migration, and know that another winter is over and gone; 

 it may be that deep calls to deep, and we have a vicarious 

 share in life's triumph over matter; it has often expressed 

 itself in reverent worship; it may be an awed elation in 

 finding ourselves part of so sublime a process as cosmic 

 evolution. This element of feeling in our outlook on Nature 

 is a satisfaction in itself, but our plea for allowing it to 

 operate in our interpretation of Nature is that we get 

 closer to some things through feeling than we do through 

 science. Just as feeling contributes to our total appreciation 

 of people, so of Nature. Through feeling we discern what 

 science cannot get into focus. Not that any one dreams of 

 mingling feeling with science or of attempting to eke out 

 science with feeling, but to try to exclude feeling from our 

 total view of Nature is to try to close one of the right-of- 

 way paths to reality. Goethe went the length of saying: 

 " Sympathy and enjoyment in what we see is in fact the 

 only reality, and, from such reality, reality as a natural 

 product follows. All else is vanity." 



