He had surrendered all his favorite
prejudices, and foresworn even the forms of criticism -- except
for his pet amusement, the Senate, which was a tonic or stimulant
necessary to healthy life; he had accepted uniformity and
Pteraspis and ice age and tramways and telephones; and now --
just when he was ready to hang the crowning garland on the brow
of a completed education -- science itself warned him to begin it
again from the beginning.
Maundering among the magnets he bethought himself that once, a
full generation earlier, he had begun active life by writing a
confession of geological faith at the bidding of Sir Charles
Lyell, and that it might be worth looking at if only to steady
his vision. He read it again, and thought it better than he could
do at sixty-three; but elderly minds always work loose. He saw
his doubts grown larger, and became curious to know what had been
said about them since 1870. The Geological Survey supplied stacks
of volumes, and reading for steady months; while, the longer he
read, the more he wondered, pondered, doubted what his delightful
old friend Sir Charles Lyell would have said about it.
Truly the animal that is to be trained to unity must be caught
young. Unity is vision; it must have been part of the process of
learning to see. The older the mind, the older its complexities,
and the further it looks, the more it sees, until even the stars
resolve themselves into multiples; yet the child will always see
but one.
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