had not yet united under a name the infinite variety of sights,
sounds, shapes and motions, which we now collectively name Universe,
Nature, or the like,--and so with a name dismiss it from us. To the
wild deep-hearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or
formulas; it stood naked, flashing-in on him there, beautiful, awful,
unspeakable. Nature was to this man, what to the Thinker and Prophet
it forever is, _preter_natural. This green flowery rock-built earth,
the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas;--that great deep
sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the
black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail
and rain; what _is_ it? Ay, what? At bottom we do not yet know; we can
never know at all. It is not by our superior insight that we escape
the difficulty; it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our
_want_ of insight. It is by _not_ thinking that we cease to wonder at
it. Hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a
wrappage of traditions, hearsays, mere _words_. We call that fire of
the black thundercloud 'electricity,' and lecture learnedly about it,
and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but _what_ is it? What
made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for
us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep
sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on
which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after
all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful,
inscrutable, _magical_ and more, to whosoever will _think_ of it.

That great mystery of TIME, were there no other: the illimitable,
silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift,
silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the
Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which _are_, and then
_are not_: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike
us dumb,--for we have no word to speak about it. This Universe, ah
me--what could the wild man know of it; what can we yet know? That it
is a Force, and thousandfold Complexity of Forces; a Force which is
_not we_. That is all; it is not we, it is altogether different from
_us_. Force, Force, everywhere Force; we ourselves a mysterious Force
in the centre of that. 'There is not a leaf rotting on the highway but
has Force in it: how else could it rot?' Nay surely, to the Athei