Now I do not recommend this as a thing to be done. All I can say is that genuinely then and now it seemed and seems to be the only kind of mental possession which one can call knowledge. It is perfectly definite and certain. I could tell where each cube came and how it was related to each of the others. As to the cube itself, I was profoundly ignorant of that; but assuming that as a necessary starting-point, taking that as granted, I had a definite mass of knowledge.
But I do not wish to say that this is better than any kind of knowledge which other people may find come home to them. All I want to do is to take this humble beginning of knowledge and show how inevitably, by devotion to it, it leads to marvellous and far-distant truths, and how, by a strange path, it leads directly into the presence of some of the highest conceptions which great minds have given us.
I do not think it ought to be any objection to an inquiry, that it begins with obvious and common details. In fact I do not think that it is possible to get anything simpler, with less of hypothesis about it, and more obviously a simple taking in of facts than the study of the arrangement of a block of cubes.
Many philosophers have assumed a starting point for their thought. I want the reader to accept a very humble one and see what comes of it. If this leads us to anything, no doubt greater results will come from more ambitious beginnings.
And now I feel that I have candidly exposed myself to the criticism of the reader. If he will have the patience to go on, we will begin and build up on our foundations.
CHAPTER II.
APPREHENSION OF NATURE. INTELLIGENCE. STUDY OF ARRANGEMENT OR SHAPE.
Nature is that which is around us. But it is by no means easy to get to nature. The savage living we may say in the bosom of nature, is certainly unapprehensive of it, in fact it has needed the greatness of a Wordsworth and of generations of poets and painters to open our eyes even in a slight measure to the wonder of nature.
Thus it is clear that it is not by mere passivity that we can comprehend nature; it is the goal of an activity, not a free gift.
And there are many ways of apprehending nature. There are the sounds and sights of nature which delight the senses, and the involved harmonies and the secret affinities which poetry makes us feel; then, moreover, there is the definite knowledge of natural facts in which the memory and reason are employed.