!

IV

But how shall Man ever attain to understand and find his proper
place in this Universe, this great sweeping harmonious circle of
which nevertheless he feels himself to be the diminutive focus?
His senses are absurdly imperfect. His ear cannot catch any music
the spheres make; and moreover there are probably neither spheres
nor music. His eye is so dull an instrument that (as Blanco
White's famous sonnet reminds us) he can neither see this world
in the dark, nor glimpse any of the scores of others until it
falls dark:

If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

Yet the Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to man save
in so far as _he_ apprehends it: and lacking him (so far as he
knows) it utterly lacks the compliment of an audience. Is all the
great orchestra designed for nothing but to please its Conductor?
Yes, if you choose: but no, as I think. And here my other
quotation:

That all spirit is mutually attractive, as all matter is
mutually attractive, is an ultimate fact.... Spirit to spirit--
as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.

Yes and, all spirit being mutually attractive, far more than
this! I preach to you that, through help of eyes that are dim, of
ears that are dull, by instinct of something yet undefined--call
it soul--it wants no less a name--Man has a native impulse and
attraction and yearning to merge himself in that harmony and be
one with it: a spirit of adoption (as St Paul says) whereby we
cry _Abba, Father!_

And because ye are Sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of
His Son into your hearts, crying _Abba, Father._

That is to say, we know we have something within us correspondent
to the harmony, and (I make bold to say) unless we have deadened
it with low desires, worthy to join in it. Even in his common
daily life Man is for ever seeking after harmony, in avoidance of
chaos: he cultivates habits by the clock, he forms committees,
governments, hierarchies, laws, constitutions, by which (as he
hopes) a system of society will work in tune. But these are
childish imitations, underplay on the great motive:

The Kingdom of God is within you.

Quid aliud est anima quam Deus in corpore humano hospitans?

V

Gentlemen, you may be thinking that I have brought you a long way
round, that the hour is wearing late, and that we are yet far
from the prey we first hunted on the line of common-sense. But be
patient for a minute or two, f