rging reed and pasture and gliding
stream in one indistinguishable shade; the trees stand out black against
the sunset, thickening to an emerald green. A star comes out over the
dark hill, the lights begin to peep out in the windows of the clustering
town as we draw nearer. As we glide beneath the dark houses, with their
gables and chimneys dark against the glowing sky, how everything that
is dull and trivial and homely is blotted out by the twilight, leaving
nothing but a sense of romantic beauty of mysterious peace! The little
town becomes an enchanted city full of heroic folk; the figure that
leans silently over the bridge to see us pass, to what high-hearted
business is he vowed, burgher or angel? A spell is woven of shadow and
falling light, and of chimes floating over meadow and stream. Yet
this sense of something remotely and unutterably beautiful, this
transfiguration of life, is as real and vital an experience as the
daily, dreary toil, and to be welcomed as such. Nay, more! it is better,
because it gives one a deepened sense of value, of significance, of
eternal greatness, to which we must cling as firmly as we may, because
it is there that the final secret lies; not in the poor struggles, the
anxious delays, which are but the incidents of the voyage, and not the
serene life of haven and home.

XV. SYMBOLS

The present time is an era when intellectual persons are ashamed of
being credulous. It is the perfectly natural and desirable result of
the working of the scientific spirit. Everything is relentlessly
investigated, the enormous structure of natural law is being discovered
to underlie all the most surprising, delicate, and apparently fortuitous
processes, and no one can venture to forecast where the systematisation
will end. The result is a great inrush of bracing and invigorating
candour. It is not that our liberty of reflection and action is
increased. It is rather increasingly limited. But at least we are
growing to discern where our boundaries are, and it is deeply refreshing
to find that the boundaries erected by humanity are much closer and more
cramping than the boundaries determined by God. We are no longer bound
by human authority, by subjective theories, by petty tradition. We
are no longer required to tremble before thaumaturgy and conjuring and
occultism. It is true that science has hitherto confined itself mainly
to the investigation of concrete phenomena; but the same process is sure