“We know in part,” said the apostle; who, therefore, prophesied in part;
always with the assurance that when that which is perfect is come, then
shall that which is in part be done away. Meanwhile, we see through a
glass darkly, through a medium obscurely—“now I know in part.”
If so it was with him that once was caught up into the third heavens,
much more with his readers. For we are but of yesterday, and know
nothing. “Behold, God is great, and we know Him not.” At the height of
our knowledge we can but fall back upon the old saying, “Lo, these are
parts of His ways; but how little a portion is heard of Him!” And when
we consider the heavens, the work of His hands; the moon and the stars,
which He hath ordained; the earth beneath, the ocean round about, the
waters under the earth, the pent-up fires within it,—verily He is a God
that hideth Himself still, and that revealeth but a portion of His work,
clouds and darkness covering the rest. His thoughts are very deep; and
what is man that he should know them, or the son of man that he should
find them out unto perfection? From the topmost pinnacles attained by
science he can see but the utmost part of them, and cannot see them all.
Locke argues the intellectual and sensible world to be in this perfectly
alike: that the part which we see of them holds no proportion with
what we see not; and that whatsoever we can reach with our eyes, or
our thoughts, of either of them, is but a point, almost nothing, in
comparison with the rest. Shall he whose birth, maturity, and age, as
Beattie has it, scarce fill the circle of one summer day—shall the
poor gnat conclude nature in collapse because of a passing cloud, not
transparent to the insect’s vision?
“One part, one little part, we dimly scan
Through the dark medium of life’s feverish dream;
Yet dare arraign the whole stupendous plan,
If but that little part incongruous seem.
Nor is that part perhaps what mortals deem;
Oft from apparent ill our blessings rise.
Oh then renounce that impious self-esteem,
That aims to trace the secrets of the skies;
For thou art but of dust: be humble and be wise.”
Freethinking Lord Shaftesbury begins a section of his “Characteristics”
with the remark, that when we reflect on any ordinary frame or
constitution, either of art or nature, and consider how hard it is to
give the least account of a particular _part_ without a competent
knowledge of the _whole_, we need not wonder to find ourselves at a loss
in many things relating to the constitution and frame of the universe.
Elsewhere he suggestively observes, that in an infinity of things
mutually relative, a mind which sees not infinitely, can see nothing
fully; “and since each particular has relation to all in general, it can
know no perfect or true relation of anything in a world not perfectly and
fully known.” And supposing the case of an ignorant landsman presuming
to question the details of a ship’s rigging, his lordship breaks out
into the apostrophe, “O my friend, let us not thus betray our ignorance,
but consider where we are, and in what a universe. Think of the many
parts of the vast machine in which we have so little insight, and of
which it is impossible we should know the ends and uses; when instead of
seeing to the highest pennons, we see only some lower deck, and are in
this dark case of flesh, confined even to the hold and meanest station
of the vessel.” There is Mrs. Browning’s usual energy of diction in the
exclamation,
“Ay, we are forced, so pent,
To judge the whole too partially, confound
Conclusions. Is there any common phrase
Significant, when the adverb’s heard alone,
The verb being absent, and the pronoun out?
But we, distracted in the roar of life,
Still insolently at God’s adverb snatch,
And bruit against Him that His thought is void,
His meaning hopeless.”
The same good Providence, as Madame de Sévigné writes, that governs all,
shall one day unravel all; we poor mortals being, in the meanwhile, so
many all but stone-blind and utterly ignorant lookers-on. We suffer,
as the author of “Thorndale” says—there is no doubt about that—and we
naturally speak and think under the sharp pang of our present agony; but
the ultimate and overruling judgment which we form of human life, should
be taken from some calm, impersonal point of view. “We should command
the widest horizon possible. Of the great whole of humanity we see but a
little at a time. We pause sometimes on the lights only of the picture,
sometimes only on the shadows. How very dark those shadows seem! Yet if
we could embrace in our view the whole of the picture, perhaps the very
darkest shadows might be recognised as effective or inevitable portions
of a grand harmonious whole.” How closes Thomson his poem of “The
Seasons,” drear Winter then his cue?—with the memorable lines:—
“Ye good distress’d!
Ye noble few! who here unbending stand
Beneath life’s pressure, yet bear up awhile;
And what your bounded view, which only saw
A little part, deemed evil, is no more:
The storms of wintry time will quickly pass,
And one unbounded spring encircle all.”
The theme of our part knowledge, so strictly cabin’d, cribb’d, confined,
is one to which Thomson repeatedly recurs. For instance, in an earlier
book:—
“But here the cloud,
So wills Eternal Providence, sits deep.
Enough for us to know that this dark state,
In wayward passions lost, and vain pursuits,
This infancy of being, cannot prove
The final issue of the works of God,
By boundless love and perfect wisdom form’d
And ever rising with the rising mind.”