1.—“_Their task ineffable yields wondrous gain_.”
“... I rest not from my great task;
To open the eternal worlds! To open the immortal eyes
Of man inwards; into the worlds of thought: into eternity
Ever expanding the human imagination.”
—William Blake (“Jerusalem”).
2.—“_Their energies celestial force attain_.”
“Les écrivains du dix-huitième siècle ont sans doute rendu d’immenses
services aux Sociétés; mais leur philosophie basée sur le sensualisme,
n’est pas allée plus loin que l’épiderme humain. Ils n’ont considéré que
l’univers extérieur, et, sous ce rapport seulement, ils ont retardé,
pour quelque temps, le développement morale de l’homme.... L’étude des
mystères de la pensée, la découverte des organes de l’AME humaine, la
géométrie de ses forces, les phénomènes de sa puissance, l’appréciation
de la faculté qu’elle nous semble posséder de se mouvoir indépendamment
du corps, de se transporter où elle veut et de voir sans le secours des
organes corporels, enfin les lois de sa dynamique et celles de son
influence physique, constitueront la glorieuse part du siècle suivant
dans le trésor des sciences humaines. Et nous ne sommes occupés peut
être, en ce moment, qu’à extraire les blocs énormes qui serviront plus
tard à quelque puissant génie pour bâtir quelque glorieux
édifice.”—Balzac (“Physiologie du Mariage,” Méditation XXVI.).
3, 4.—“_Their intermingled souls, with passion dight,
In aspiration soar past earthly height_.”
“As yet we are in the infancy of our knowledge. What we have done is but
a speck compared to what remains to be done. For what is there that we
really know? We are too apt to speak as if we had penetrated into the
sanctuary of truth and raised the veil of the goddess, when, in fact, we
are still standing, coward-like, trembling before the vestibule, and not
daring, from very fear, to cross the threshold of the temple. The
highest of our so-called laws of nature are as yet purely empirical.
“... They who discourse to you of the laws of nature as if those laws
were binding upon nature, or as if they formed a part of nature, deceive
both you and themselves. The (so-called) laws of nature have their sole
seat, origin, and function in the human mind. They are simply the
conditions under which the regularity of nature is recognised. They
explain the external world, but they reside in the internal. As yet we
know scarcely anything of the laws of mind, and, therefore, we scarcely
know anything of the laws of nature. We talk of the law of gravitation,
and yet we know not what gravitation is; we talk of the conservation of
force and distribution of forces, and we know not what forces are; we
talk with complacent ignorance of the atomic arrangements of matter, and
we neither know what atoms are nor what matter is; we do not even know
if matter, in the ordinary sense of the word, can be said to exist; we
have as yet only broken the first ground, we have but touched the crust
and surface of things. Before us and around us there is an immense and
untrodden field, whose limits the eye vainly strives to define; so
completely are they lost in the dim and shadowy outline of the future.
In that field, which we and our posterity have yet to traverse, I firmly
believe that the imagination will effect quite as much as the
understanding. Our poetry will have to reinforce our logic, and we must
feel as much as we argue. Let us then hope, that the imaginative and
emotional minds of one sex will continue to accelerate the great
progress, by acting upon and improving the colder and harder minds of
the other sex.”—Buckle (“Influence of Women on the Progress of
Knowledge”).
6.—“... _the vision to retain_,”