Is it possible? That is the question—the question which each one of us has to solve. At any rate, let us throw this out as a suggestion. Let us suggest that as we have got nothing satisfactory by cleaning the sense-element out of phenomena, we should take the opposite course and put as much sense into them as we can!
"Facts" are, at least, half feelings. Let us acknowledge this and not empty the feeling out of them, but deepen and enlarge that which we already have in them. Who knows whether we have ever seen the blue sky? Who knows whether we have ever seen each other? Is it not a commonplace to say that one man sees in the common objects of Nature what another is wholly unconscious of? "The primrose on the river's brim a yellow primrose is to him—and nothing more." To what extent may the facts of Nature thus be deepened and made more substantial to us—and whither will this process lead us?
Do we not want to feel more, not less, in the presence of phenomena—to enter into a living relation with the blue sky, and the incense-laden air, and the plants and the animals—nay, even with poisonous and hurtful things to have a keener sense of their hurtfulness? Is it not a strange kind of science, that which wakes the mind to pursue the shadows of things, but dulls the senses to the reality of them—which causes a man to try to bottle the pure atmosphere of heaven and then to shut himself in a gas-reeking, ill-ventilated laboratory while he analyses it; or allows him to vivisect a dog, unconscious that he is blaspheming the pure and holy relation between man and the animals in doing so? Surely the man of Science (in its higher sense, that is) should be lynx-eyed as an Indian, keen-scented as a hound—with all senses and feelings trained by constant use and a pure and healthy life in close contact with Nature, and with a heart beating in sympathy with every creature. Such a man would have at command, so to speak, the keyboard of the universe; but the mechanical, unhealthy, indoor-living student—is he not really ignorant of the facts?—Certainly, since he has not felt them, he is.
The process of the true Science consists first in the naming and defining of phenomena (i.e., the facts of human consciousness), and secondly, in the discovery of the true relation of these phenomena to each other; and since the definitions of phenomena and their relations keep varying with the standpoint of the observer, the process evidently involves all experience, and ultimately the discovery of that last fact of experience to which and through which all the other facts are related. It is therefore an age-long process, and has to do with the emotional and moral part of man as well as with the logical and intellectual. It is, in fact, the discovery of the nature of Man himself, and of the true order of his being.
Modern Science—though seeking for a unity in Nature—fails to find it, because, from the nature of the case, any large body of knowledge in which all people will agree is limited to certain small regions of human experience—regions in which very likely no unity is discoverable. It takes the emerald, and breaks it up; treats of its colour and light-refracting qualities on the one hand; of its crystalline structure and hardness on the other; of its weight and density; and of its chemical properties; all separately, and producing long strings of generalisation from each aspect of the subject. But how all these qualities are conjoined together, what their relation is which constitutes the emerald—yea, even the smallest bit of emerald dust—it (wisely) does not attempt to say. It takes the man and dissects him; treats of his blood, his nerves, his bones, his brain; of his senses of sight, of touch, of hearing; but of that which binds these together into a unity, of their true relation to each other in the man, it is silent.
Yet the man knows of himself that he is a unity; he knows that all parts of his body have relation to him, and to each other; he knows that his senses of sight and hearing and touch and taste and smell are conjoined in the focus of his individual life, in his "I am;" he knows that all his faculties and powers, however much they may belong to different planes, spiritual or material, or may come under the inquisition of different Sciences, have an order of their own among each other—that there is an ultimate Science of them—even though he be not yet wholly versed in it. And he knows, moreover, that in a grain of dust, or in an emerald, or in an orange, or in any object of Nature, the different attributes of the object—which the Sciences thus treat of separately—are only the reflexion of his different senses; so that the problem of the conjunction of different attributes in a body comes back to the same problem of the union of various senses and powers in himself—each individual object being only a case, externalised as it were, and made a matter of consciousness, of the general relation to each other of his own sensations and feelings. Knowing all his—I say—he sees that the understanding of Nature in general and of the laws or relations which he thinks he perceives among external things must always depend on the relations and laws which he tacitly assumes, or which he is directly conscious of, as existing between the various parts of his own being; and that the ultimate truth which Science—the divine Science—is really in search of is a moral or psychologic Truth—an understanding of what man is, and the discovery of the true relation to each other of all his faculties—involving all experience, and an exercise of every faculty physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual, instead of one set of faculties only.
Not till we know the law of ourselves, in fact, shall we know the law of the emerald and the orange, or of Nature generally; and the law of ourselves is not learnt, except subordinately, by intellectual investigation; it is mainly learnt by life. The relation of gravity to vitality is learnt not so much by outer experiment in a laboratory as by long experience within ourselves from the day when as infants we cannot lift ourselves above the floor, through the years of the proud strength of manhood scaling the loftiest mountains, to the hour when our disengaged spirits finally overcome and pass beyond the attraction of the earth; and just as the sense of weight—which first appears as a quite external sensation—is thus at last found to stand in most pregnant relation with our deepest selves, so of the other senses which feed the individual life—the senses of light, of warmth, of taste, of sound, of smell. Taste, which begins as it were on the tip of the tongue, becomes ultimately, if normally developed, a sense which identifies itself with the health and well-being of the whole body; the pleasure of taste becomes vastly more than a mere surface pleasure, and its discrimination of food more than a mere regard for the nutrition of the ordinary corporeal functions. The sense of Light, which begins in the material eye, grows and deepens inwardly till the consciousness of it pervades the whole body and mind with a kind of inward illumination or divine Reason, showing the places of all things and enfolding the sense of beauty in itself. The sense of Warmth in the same manner is related to and leads up to Love; and Sound, in the voices of our friends or the divine chords of music, has passed away from being an external phenomenon and has established itself as the language of our most tender and intimate emotions.
All the senses thus, as they develop and deepen, are found to unite in the very focus of individual life. Slowly, and through long experience, their relation to each other, their very meaning unfolds, or will unfold; and as this process takes place the man knows himself one, a unity, of which the various faculties are the different manifestations. Then further through his less localised feelings or more glorified senses the individual finds his relation to other individuals. Through his loves and hatreds, through his senses of attraction, repulsion, cohesion, solidarity, order, justice, charity, right, wrong and the rest—these feelings, each like the others deepening back more and more as time goes on—he gradually discovers his true and abiding relationship to other individuals, and to the divine society of which they all form a part—and so at last, if we may venture to say so, his relationship to the absolute and universal. At present, since our most important relation to each other is conceived of as one of rivalry and Competition, we of course think of the objects of Nature as being chiefly engaged in a Struggle for Existence with each other; but when we become aware of all our senses and feelings, and of ourselves as individuals, as having relation to the Absolute and universal, proceeding from it, as the branches and twigs of a tree from the trunk—then we shall become aware of a Divine or absolute science in Nature; we shall at last understand that all objects have a permanent and indissoluble relation to each other, and shall see their true meaning—though not till then.
Is it possible then that Science, having hitherto—and we shall see in time that this process has been really most valuable and important—gone outwards from the centre towards the very fringe of Humanity—emptying facts as far as possible as it went of all feeling, and reducing itself at last to the most shadowy generalisations on the very verge of sense and nonsense—is it possible, I say, that it will now return, and first filling up facts with feeling as far as practicable (that is, by direct and the most living contact with Nature in every form, learning to enter into direct personal sense-relationship with every phenomenon and phase), will so gradually ascend to the great central fact and feeling, and then at last and for the first time become fully conscious of a vast organisation—absolutely perfect and intimately knit from its centre to its utmost circumference—(the true cosmos of Man—the conceptions of man and god combined)—existing inchoate or embryonic in every individual man, animal, plant, or other creature—the object of all life, experience, suffering, and toil—the ground of all sensation, and the hidden, yet proper, theme of all thought and study?
For this is it possible that Science will, speaking broadly, have to leave the laboratory and become one with Life; or that the great currents of human life will have to be turned on into these often Augean stables of intellectual pruriency?—the investigation of Nature no longer a matter of the intellect alone, but of patient listening and the quiet eye, and of love and faith, and of all deep human experience, bearing not superciliously its weight towards the interpretation of the least phenomenon—every "fact" thus deepened to its utmost—all experience (rather than experiment) courted, and filial walking with Nature, rather than tearing of veils aside—the life of the open air, and on the land and the waters, the companionship of the animals and the trees and the stars, the knowledge of their habits at first hand and through individual relationship to them, the recognition of their voices and languages, and listening well what they themselves have to say; the keenest education of the senses towards the physical powers and elements, and the acceptance of all human experience, without exception—till Science become a reality.