276 HERBERT SPENCER

ness standing in place of positive answers must ever
remain."

"An unreflective mood, he said, is general among both
cultured and uncultured, characterised by indifference to
everything beyond material interests and the superficial
aspects of things." . . . "But in both cultured and un-
cultured there occur lucid intervals. Some, at least, either
fill the vacuum by stereotyped answers, or become conscious
of unanswered questions of transcendent moment. By those
who know much, more than by those who know little, is
there felt the need for explanation. Whence this process,
inconceivable however symbolised, by which alike the monad
and the man build themselves up into their respective
structures ? What must we say of the life, minute, multi-
tudinous, degraded, which, covering the ocean-floor, occupies
by far the larger part of the Earth's area; and which yet,
growing and decaying in utter darkness, presents hundreds of
species of a single type ? Or, when we think of the myriads
of years of the Earth's past, during which have arisen and
passed away low forms of creatures, small and great, which,
murdering and being murdered, have gradually evolved, how
shall we answer the question—To what end ? Ascending
to wider problems, in which way are we to interpret the life-
lessness of the greater celestial masses—the giant planets and
the Sun; in proportion to which the habitable planets are
mere nothings ? If we pass from these relatively near bodies
to the thirty millions of remote suns and solar systems, where
shall we find a reason for all this apparently unconscious ex-
istence, infinite in amount compared with the existence which
is conscious—a waste Universe as it seems ? Then behind
these mysteries lies the all-embracing mystery—whence this
universal transformation which has gone on unceasingly
throughout a past eternity and will go on unceasingly through-
out a future eternity ? And along with this rises the paralys-
ing thought—what if, of all that is thus incomprehensible to
us, there exists no comprehension anywhere ? No wonder
that men take refuge in authoritative dogma! "

" So is it, too, with our own natures. No less inscrutable
is this complex consciousness which has slowly evolved out