SELBORNE 305 



spiritual. We are not like children gathering 

 painted shells and pebbles on a beach ; but, 

 whether we know it or not, are seeking after 

 something beyond and above knowledge. The 

 wilderness in which we are sojourners is not our 

 home ; it is enough that its herbs and roots and 

 wild fruits nourish and give us strength to go 

 onward. Intellectual curiosity, with the grati- 

 fication of the individual for only purpose, has no 

 place in this scheme of things as we conceive it. 

 Heart and soul are with the brain in all investiga- 

 tion — a truth which some know in rare, beautiful 

 intervals, and others never ; but we are all mean- 

 while busy with our work, like myriads of social 

 insects engaged in raising a structure that was 

 never planned. Perhaps we are not so wholly 

 unconscious of our destinies as were the patient 

 gatherers of facts of a hundred years ago. Even 

 in one brief century the dawn has come nearer — 

 perhaps a faint whiteness in the east has exhila- 

 rated us hke wine. Undoubtedly we are more 

 conscious of many things, both within and 

 without — of the length and breadth and depth 

 of nature ; of a unity which was hardly dreamed 

 of by the naturalists of past ages, a commensalism 



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