And sunrises and sunsets wake in Wordsworth's soul the thought of
"The light that never was on sea or land."
And it is the world-old feeling of life and joy that breathes in Blake's lines "To Morning":
"O holy virgin! clad in purest white,
Unlock heaven's golden gates and issue forth;
Awake the dawn that sleeps in heaven; let light
Rise from the chambers of the east, and bring
The honey'd dew that cometh on waking day.
O radiant morning, salute the sun,
Roused like a huntsman to the chase, and with
Thy buskin'd feet appear upon our hills."
But what of modern science? Does not that eliminate the mystic element? Far from that, it increases it. The dominant theory is that light is a sensation caused by waves in ether which travel at a speed of 186,000 miles a second. Of this theory Whewell wrote in 1857 that Optics had "reached her grand generalisation in a few years by sagacious and happy speculations." But it was not thus that a halting-place was gained. For there succeeded the discoveries of Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, Hertz, and other great physicists who used the old theory merely as a foundation for a superstructure of unsuspected and wondrous proportions. The theory of electrons came to the front, and the phenomena of light are being linked on to those of electricity. The phenomena of electricity, again, are being linked on to those of life. And thus, as ever where our deepest intuitions are concerned, the nature-mystic finds himself in harmony with and abreast of the latest developments of modern knowledge.
At the dawn of human thought light and life were dimly but persistently felt to be akin, if not identical. And now we know it was a deep prompting of mother nature which caused men to give to their divine beings the simple name—"the Bright Ones."
CHAPTER XXX
THE EXPANSE OF HEAVEN—COLOUR
"The broad open eye of the solitary sky."