It begins by supposing that the universe has its course in God's thoughts—
At first imagined lay
The sacred world; and by procession sure
From those still deeps, in form and colour drest,
Seasons alternating, and night and day,
The long-mused thought to north, south, east, and west
Took then its all-seen way.
If this be true, and thou, man, awaking to the consciousness that the world of Nature is thus caused of God, wishest to know the whole of life and thine own life in it, oh, beware. Only by pure and solitary thought thou shalt attain, if thou canst attain; and the search will sever thee from the pleasant human world into a painful solitude. The verse in which Arnold tells this is so prophetic in its excellence of his best poetry, so full of his distinctive note, that I quote it:
And faint the city gleams;
Rare the lone pastoral huts—marvel not thou!
The solemn peaks but to the stars are known,
But to the stars, and the cold lunar beams;
Alone the sun arises, and alone
Spring the great streams.
But if this be not true, and Nature has never known a divine birth, and thou, man, alone wakest to consciousness of a great difference between thyself and Nature—thou, the last and radiant birth of earth's obscure working—oh, beware of pride. Think that thou too only
