1882.] 
Science and its Sense of Beauty . 
207 
may answer that it is as real as the vapour and the solar 
light, and produced as naturally by the colours of sunset as 
refraction is by vapour. We may ask if we are not sur- 
rounded by that same Infinite which the sunset woos us to 
reflect upon. But the Infinite, and the why and wherefore 
we are here, are matters for the soul, and not altogether for 
chemistry or physics to consider. 
A judicious blending of all kinds of culture, then, is what 
we require, each correcting the extravagances of the other. 
We should view Nature like an artist, seeing in her the 
Divine art ; we should feel Nature like a poet, seeing in her 
the Divine spirit ; we should know Nature like the man of 
Science, seeing in her the Divine mode of working ; we 
should seek harmoniously after beauty, goodness, and truth. 
What, after all, is the scientific view of Nature ? The 
most we can know is that we can know nothing. Not- 
withstanding all the advance of positive science, the 
diCtum of Socrates is still profoundly true. We learn 
a great deal about the actions of certain small bodies be- 
lieved to exist, called molecules, the stones of the temple of 
creation. We know many of their groupings and inter- 
changes. We can figure them symbolically as an algebraist 
writes formulae. But they themselves are essentially un- 
known quantities still. We may measure them by the 
intellect, but we can never see them. They have what we 
call certain properties, but what they really are is beyond 
our ken. They must ever remain mere ideas to us. So, 
after all our Science, we come to mystery in the end. Our 
reality lands us in ideality. All our Science can only stem 
back the unknown ocean of truth, mystic and awful, from 
the organism to the ultimate atom. We can only regard 
the universe, and man the microcosm, as a whole, whose 
wondrous construction we may gain some wise insight into, 
but whose material is an unfathomable mystery. 
“ We are such stuff as dreams are made of, 
And our little life is rounded with a sleep.’ 
