nnow understand the Ocean tides and periodic
Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses, by all
which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time
to time (_un_-miraculously enough) be quite overset and reversed? Such a
minnow is Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable
All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious course of
Providence through AEons of AEons.'[10] The inalterable relativity of
human knowledge has never been more forcibly illustrated; and the two
passages together fix the limits of that knowledge with a sagacity truly
philosophic. Between the vagaries of mystics and the vagaries of
physicists lies the narrow land of rational certainty, relative,
conditional, experimental, from which we view the vast realm that
stretches out unknown before us, and perhaps for ever unknowable;
inspiring men with an elevated awe, and environing the interests and
duties of their little lives with a strange sublimity. 'We emerge from
the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; then plunge
again into the Inane.... But whence? O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not;
Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery.'[11]

[9] 'Characteristics,' _Misc. Ess._, iii. pp. 356-358. Rousseau in the
same way makes the Savoyard Vicar declare that '_jamais le jargon de la
metaphysique n'a fait decouvrir une seule verite, et il a rempli la
philosophie d'absurdites dont on a honte, sitot qu'on les depouille de
leurs grands mots_.'--_Emile_, liv. iv.

[10] _Sartor Resartus_, bk. iii. ch. viii. p. 249.

[11] _Ib._ p. 257.

Natural Supernaturalism, the title of one of the cardinal chapters in
Mr. Carlyle's cardinal book, is perhaps as good a name as another for
this two-faced yet integral philosophy, which teaches us to behold with
cheerful serenity the great gulf which is fixed round our faculty and
existence on every side, while it fills us with that supreme sense of
countless unseen possibilities, and of the hidden, undefined movements
of shadow and light over the spirit, without which the soul of man falls
into hard and desolate sterility. In youth, perhaps, it is the latter
aspect of Mr. Carlyle's teaching which first touches people, because
youth is the time of indefinite aspiration; and it is easier, besides,
to surrender ourselves passively to these vague emotional impressions,
than to apply actively and contentedly to the duty that lies nearest