But one
has got no nearer to knowing what matter or force is, or how they came
into being.
And then, too, even from the scientific point of view, the subjective
effect of the contemplation of nature by the mind is just as much a
phenomenon; it is there--it demands recognition. The emotions of man
are a scientific fact, too, and an even more complicated scientific
fact than matter and force. When Wordsworth says that he was
"Contented if he might enjoy
The things that others understand,"
he is but stating the fact that there is a mystical poetical perception
of nature as well as a scientific one. Perhaps when science has done
her work on elemental atoms and forces, she will turn to the analysis
of psychological problems. And meanwhile it must suffice to recognise
that the work of the scientist is as essentially poetical, if done in a
certain spirit, as the work of the poet. It is essentially poetical,
because the deeper that the man of science dives into the mystery, the
darker and more bewildering it becomes. Science, instead of solving the
mystery, has added enormously to its complexity by disposing of the old
comfortable theory that man is the darling of Nature and that all
things were created for his use. We know now that man is only a local
and temporary phenomenon in the evolution of some dim and gigantic law;
that he perhaps represents the highest development which that law has
at present evolved, but that probably we are rather at the threshold
than at the climax of evolution, and that there will be developments in
the future that we cannot even dimly apprehend.
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