From a Cornish Window / A New Edition - Arthur Quiller-Couch

A hard matter to believe, no doubt! We see this world so clearly; the spiritual world so dimly, so rarely, if at all! We may fortify ourselves with the reminder (to be found in Blanco White's famous sonnet) that the first man who lived on earth had to wait for the darkness before he saw the stars and guessed that the Universe extended beyond this earth—

"Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'd
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood reveal'd,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?"

He may, or may not, believe that the same duty governs his infinitesimal activity and the motions of the heavenly bodies—

"Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run…"

—That his duty is one with that of which Wordsworth sang—

"Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong."

But in a higher order of some sort, and his duty of conforming with it, he does not seem able to avoid believing.