chitects and preachers
of the Middle Ages altogether believed in the strange fables of the
Bestiaries. As Mr COLLINS says in reply to this question: "Probably they
were credulous enough. But, on the whole, we may say that the truth of
the story was just what they did not trouble about, any more than some
clergymen are particular about the absolute truth of the stories they
tell children from the pulpit. The application, the lesson, is the
thing!" With their desire to interpret Nature spiritually, we ought,
I think, to sympathise. But there was one truth they had yet to learn,
namely, that in order to interpret Nature spiritually, it is necessary
first to understand her aright in her literal sense.

IX. THE QUEST OF THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE

THE need of unity is a primary need of human thought. Behind the
varied multiplicity of the world of phenomena, primitive man, as I
have indicated on a preceding excursion, begins to seek, more or less
consciously, for that Unity which alone is Real. And this statement not
only applies to the first dim gropings of the primitive human mind,
but sums up almost the whole of science and philosophy; for almost all
science and philosophy is explicitly or implicitly a search for unity,
for one law or one love, one matter or one spirit. That which is the aim
of the search may, indeed, be expressed under widely different terms,
but it is always conceived to be the unity in which all multiplicity is
resolved, whether it be thought of as one final law of necessity, which
all things obey, and of which all the various other "laws of nature" are
so many special and limited applications; or as one final love for which
all things are created, and to which all things aspire; as one matter of
which all bodies are but varying forms; or as one spirit, which is the
life of all things, and of which all things are so many manifestations.
Every scientist and philosopher is a merchant seeking for goodly pearls,
willing to sell every pearl that he has, if he may secure the One Pearl
beyond price, because he knows that in that One Pearl all others are
included.

This search for unity in multiplicity, however, is not confined to
the acknowledged scientist and philosopher. More or less unconsciously
everyone is engaged in this quest. Harmony and unity are the very
fundamental laws of the human mind itself, and, in a sense, all mental
activity is the endeavour to bring about a state of harmony and unity
i