THE UNFATHOMED UNIVERSE 27 



In the preface to his Diversions of a Naturalist (1915, 

 p. vi), Sir Ray Lankester, who has so greatly enriched 

 Zoology, speaks in a very interesting way of the value of 

 science in giving us prevision and control, but goes on to 

 say : " Science commends itself to us as does Honesty and 

 as does great Art and all fine thought and deed not as a 

 policy yielding material profits, but because it satisfies man's 

 soul." This is very different from the old moan that increase 

 of knowledge is increase of sorrow, and surely more whole- 

 some, but we wonder if it is true. Is it science that satisfies 

 man's soul, or is it the attendant feeling and imagining 

 which the study of Nature evokes ? 



There have always been men of science, tough-minded 

 by birth, to whom an enthusiasm for natural knowledge has 

 been in itself enough, who have asked for no satisfaction 

 from either faith or feeling; and the world owes much to 

 their preoccupation. But this has not been true on the 

 whole; the unsatisfyingness of an exclusively scientific view 

 of Nature has been confessed age after age. 



In the ages of the empirical order Man had his imaginative 

 constructions of early magic and of early animism. These 

 were attempts to eke out very imperfect understanding and 

 very imperfect control of Nature, but they were also sops 

 to feeling. The replacement of the empirical order by the 

 scientific order was great gain. It meant a less beclouded 

 intellectual sky and a greatly increased mastery of natural 

 resources. But with the gain came loss, for the reconstruc- 

 tions of science are austere, not home-like to the human spirit. 

 The creations of early days the attractive elves as well 

 as the repellent gnomes were scattered by the growing light 

 of science, save a few which found refuge and here and 

 there still linger in the caverns of Man's mind. There is 



