Pope’s well-worked line is of perpetual application,
“’Tis but a part we see, and not the whole.”
So is the avowal of the present laureate:
“I see in part
That all, as in some work of art,
Is toil co-operant to an end.”
To us, as Sir Benjamin Brodie remarks, in one of his psychological discussions, the universe presents itself as an assemblage of heterogeneous phenomena, some of which we can reduce to laws of limited operation, while others stand by themselves, bearing no evident relation to anything besides. We may well, he thinks, suppose that there are in the universe beings of a superior intelligence, and possessed of a greater range of observation, who are sufficiently “behind the scenes” to be able to contemplate all the immense variety of material phenomena as the result of one great general law. Their standpoint may enable them to see a Cosmos, a world of order, where to lower intelligences Chaos alone is discernible, a world comparatively without form and void, with darkness upon the face of its deep. And as with the physical, so with the metaphysical. As with the material, so with the moral.
“Experience, like a pale musician, holds
A dulcimer of patience in his hand;
Whence harmonies we cannot understand