Page:Moral Obligation to be Intelligent.djvu/142

 but lets the car, like gravitation, do its work. But he gapes for hours at a steel hammer or a serviceable saw.

Our pity, then, for primitive man's defective science, hardly covers the situation. Surely we can forgive the first comers for taking hold by the wrong handles; we still revise our methods. But what if we, who think of the universe as a realm of law, feel toward it no great wonder, not even a hearty approval, but still yearn after a magic, after an escape of some kind from the inexorable logic of life; what if we, who know the majestic fidelity wherewith nature keeps her elements true to themselves, still desire, in the most spiritual things, an outworn alchemy! I wish to raise the question whether the literature even of modern times, far from expressing wonder, does not express a certain unwillingness to face the world we know; whether