no joint or ligament, except in relation to the whole organism, and no fact, or event, except by finding a place for it in the context of our experience.  The history of the pebble can be given, only in the light of the story of the earth, as it is told by the whole of geology.  We must begin very far back, and bring our widest principles to bear upon the particular thing, if we wish really to know what it is.  It is a law that explains, and laws are always universal.  All our knowledge, even the most broken and inconsistent, streams from some fundamental conception, in virtue of which all the variety of objects constitute one world, one orderly kosmos, even to the meanest mind.  It is true that the central thought, be it rich or poor, must, like the sun’s light, be broken against particular facts.  But there is no need of forgetting the real source of knowledge, or of deeming that its progress is a synthesis without law, or an addition of fact to fact without any guiding principles.

Now, it is the characteristic of poetry and philosophy that they keep alive our consciousness of these primary, uniting principles.  They always dwell in the presence of the idea which makes their object one.  To them the world is always, and necessarily, a harmonious whole, as it is also to the religious spirit.  It is because of this that the universe is a thing of beauty for the poet, a revelation of God’s goodness to the devout soul, and a manifestation of absolute reason to the philosopher.  Art, religion, and philosophy fail or flourish together.  The age of prose and scepticism appears when the sense of the presence of the whole in the particular facts of the world and of life has been dulled.  And there is a necessity in this; for if the conception of the world as a whole is held to be impossible, if philosophy is a futility, then poetry will be a vain sentiment and religion a delusion.

Nor will the failure of thought, when once demonstrated in these upper regions, be confined to them.  On the contrary, it will spread downwards to science and ordinary knowledge, as mountain mists blot out the valleys.  For every synthesis of fact to fact, every attempt to know, however humble and limited, is inspired by a secret faith in the unity of the world.  Each of the sciences works within its own region, and colligates its details in the light of its own hypothesis; and all the sciences taken together presuppose the presence in the world of a principle that binds it into an orderly totality.  Scientific explorers know that they are all working towards the same centre.  And, ever and anon, as the isolated thinker presses home his own hypothesis, he finds his thought beating on the limits of his science, and suggesting some wider hypothesis.  The walls that separate the sciences are wearing thin, and at times light penetrates from one to the other.  So that to their votaries, at least, the faith is progressively justified, that there is a meeting point for the sciences,