the street is a Great
Might-Not-Have-Been.

But I really felt (the fancy may seem foolish) as if all the order
and number of things were the romantic remnant of Crusoe's ship.
That there are two sexes and one sun, was like the fact that there
were two guns and one axe. It was poignantly urgent that none should
be lost; but somehow, it was rather fun that none could be added.
The trees and the planets seemed like things saved from the wreck:
and when I saw the Matterhorn I was glad that it had not been overlooked
in the confusion. I felt economical about the stars as if they were
sapphires (they are called so in Milton's Eden): I hoarded the hills.
For the universe is a single jewel, and while it is a natural cant
to talk of a jewel as peerless and priceless, of this jewel it is
literally true. This cosmos is indeed without peer and without price:
for there cannot be another one.

Thus ends, in unavoidable inadequacy, the attempt to utter the
unutterable things. These are my ultimate attitudes towards life;
the soils for the seeds of doctrine. These in some dark way I
thought before I could write, and felt before I could think:
that we may proceed more easily afterwards, I will roughly recapitulate
them now. I felt in my bones; first, that this world does not
explain itself. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation;
it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation.
But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me,
will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard.
The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel as if magic
must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it.
There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art;
whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this
purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects,
such as dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it
is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God
for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them. We owed,
also, an obedience to whatever made us. And last, and strangest,
there had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some
way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some
primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods:
he had saved them from a wreck. All this I felt and the age gave me
no encouragement to feel it. And all this time I h