IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 29 



And valley, and the immeasurable heavens 

 Break open to their highest, and all the stars 

 Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart." 17 



If the half-savage Greek could share our feelings thus 

 far, it is irrational to doubt that he went further, to find 

 as we do, that upon that brief gladness there follows a 

 certain sorrow, the little light of awakened human in- 

 telligence shines so mere a spark amidst the abyss of the 

 unknown and unknowable; seems so insufficient to do 

 more than illuminate the imperfections that cannot be 

 remedied, the aspirations that cannot be realised, of 

 man's own nature. But in this sadness, this conscious- 

 ness of the limitation of man, this sense of an open secret 

 which he cannot penetrate, lies the essence of all religion ; 

 and the attempt to embody it in the forms furnished by 

 the intellect is the origin of the higher theologies. 



Thus it seems impossible to imagine but that the 

 foundations of all knowledge secular or sacred were 

 laid when intelligence dawned, though the superstructure 

 remained for long ages so slight and feeble as to be 

 compatible with the existence of almost any general view 

 respecting the mode of governance of the universe. No 

 doubt, from the first, there were certain phenomena 

 which, to the rudest mind, presented a constancy of 

 occurrence, and suggested that a fixed order ruled, at any 

 rate, among them. I doubt if the grossest of Fetish 

 worshippers ever imagined that a stone must have a god 

 within it to make it fall, or that a fruit had a god within 

 it to make it taste sweet. With regard to such matters 

 as these, is is hardly questionable that mankind from the 

 first took strictly positive and scientific views. 



But, with respect to all the less familiar occurrences 

 which present themselves, uncultured man, no doubt, has 



17 Need it be said that this is Tennyson's English for Homer's 

 Greek? [T. H. H.I 



