e of astronomical experience in a single act
of attention--would be to believe that a most incredible miracle had
at some time taken place--an incredible miracle so far as any
knowledge that we now possess enables us to foresee what the natural
conditions under which man lives, and is, in human form, conscious,
permit. But, on the other hand, to accept, as we all do, the validity
of that scientific interpretation of the data of human experience
which astronomy reports is to acknowledge that such an interpretation
more or less completely records a system of facts which are nothing if
they are not in some definite sense empirical, although, in their
wholeness, they are experienced by no man. That is, the acceptance of
the substantial truth of astronomy involves the acknowledgment that
some such, to us simply superhuman, consciousness is precisely as real
as the stars are real, and as their courses, and as all their
relations are real. Yet, of course, we cannot undertake to investigate
any process such as would enable us to define the natural conditions
under which any such superhuman {270} survey of astronomical facts
would become psychologically possible.

The acceptance of our natural sciences, as valid interpretations of
connections of experience which our form of consciousness forbids us
directly to verify, logically presupposes, at every step, that such
superhuman forms and unities of consciousness are real. For the facts
of science are indefinable except as facts in and for a real
experience. But, on the other hand, we can hope for no advance in
physical or in psychological knowledge which would enable us to bring
these higher forms of consciousness under what we call natural laws.
So the superhuman forms of consciousness remain for us also
supernatural. _That_ they are, we must acknowledge, if any assertion
whatever about our world is to be either true or false. For all
assertions are made about experience, and about its real connections,
and about its systems. But _what_ conditions, _what_ natural causes,
bring such superhuman forms of consciousness into existence we are
unable to investigate. For every assertion about nature or about
natural laws presupposes that natural facts and laws are real only in
so far as they are the objects known to such higher unities of
consciousness. The unities in question are themselves no natural
objects; while all natural facts are objects for them and are
expressions of their me