ons, extending itself into
the limitless obscurity; the half seen, suggesting the unknown; the
cosmic correlation appearing clearly, not to sight but to intelligence,
in the vast, dim space; the invisible become visible--these are the
great overshadowing! Man lives beneath it. He is ignorant of detail, but
he carries, in such proportion as he is able to bear, the weight of the
monstrous whole. This obsession prompted the astronomy of the Chaldean
shepherds. Involuntary revelations flow from creation; hints of science
fall from it unconsciously and are absorbed by the ignorant. Every
solitary, impregnated in this mysterious way, becomes, without being
aware of it, a natural philosopher.

The darkness is indivisible. It is inhabited. Inhabited by the
changeless absolute; inhabited also by change. Action exists there,
disquieting thought! An awful creative will works out its phases.
Premeditations, Powers, fore-ordained Destinies, elaborate there
together an incommensurable work. A life of horror and terror is hidden
therein. There are vast evolutions of suns; the stellar family, the
planetary family; zodiacal pollen; the _Quid Divinum_ of currents;
effluvia, polarisations, and attractions; there are embraces and
antagonisms; a magnificent flux and reflux of universal antithesis; the
imponderable, free-floating around fixed centres; there is the sap of
globes and light beyond globes; the wandering atom, the scattered germ,
the processes of fecundity, meetings for union and for combat;
unimagined profusion, distances which are as a dream, vertiginous
orbits, the rush of worlds into the incalculable; marvels following each
other in the obscurity. One mechanism works throughout in the breath of
fleeing spheres, and the wheels that we know are turning. The sage
conjectures; the ignorant man believes and trembles. These things exist
and yet are hidden; they are inexpugnable, beyond reach, beyond
approach.

We are convinced and oppressed--we feel, we know not what dark evidence
within us; we realise nothing, but are crushed by the impalpable.

All is incomprehensible, but nothing is unintelligible.

And add to all that, the tremendous question: Is this immanent universe
a Being?

We exist beneath the shadow. We look; we listen. And meanwhile the dark
earth rolls onward. The flowers are conscious of this tremendous motion;
the one opens at eleven in the evening and the other at five in the
morning. Astounding sense of law!