Page:John Uri Lloyd - Etidorhpa.djvu/137

 obscures the origin and covers the end. But perseverance, study of nature's forces, and comparison of the past with the present, will yet clarify human knowledge and make plain much of this seemingly mysterious, but never will man reach the beginning or the end. The course of human education, to this day, has been mostly materialistic, although, together with the study of matter, there has been more or less attention given to its moving spirit. Newton was the dividing light in scientific thought; he stepped between the reasonings of the past and the provings of the present, and introduced problems that gave birth to a new scientific tendency, a change from tile study of matter from the material side to that of force and matter, but his thought has since been carried out in a mode too realistic by far. The study of material bodies has given way, it is true, in a few cases to the study of the spirit of matter, and evolution is beginning to teach men that matter is crude. As a result, thought will in its sequence yet show that modifications of energy expression are paramount. This work is not lost, however, for the consideration of the nature of sensible material, is preliminary and necessary to progression (as the life of the savage prepares the way for that of the cultivated student), and is a meager and primitive child's effort, compared with the richness of the study in unseen energy expressions that are linked with matter, of which men will yet learn."

"I comprehend some of this," I replied; "but I am neither prepared to assent to nor dissent from your conclusions, and my mind is not clear as to whether your logic is good or bad. I am more ready to speak plainly about my own peculiar situation than to become absorbed in abstruse arguments in science, and I marvel more at the soft light that is here surrounding us than at the metaphysical reasoning in which you indulge."

"The child ignorant of letters wonders at the resources of those who can spell and read, and, in like manner, many obscure natural phenomena are marvelous to man only because of his ignorance. You do not comprehend the fact that sunlight is simply a matter-bred expression, an outburst of interrupted energy, and that the modification this energy undergoes makes it visible or sensible to man. What, think you, becomes of the flood of light energy that unceasingly flows from the sun? For ages, for