When Homer tells us of a place
Where even a god might gaze, and stand apart,
And feel a wondering rapture at the heart,
it is of no prospect of sea or mountain that he is speaking, but of
a garden where everything is planted in rows, and there is a
never-ending succession of pears and figs. These gentler aspects of
Nature will have their minor deities to represent them; but the men,
of whatever race they be, whose minds are most absorbed in the
problems of man's position and destiny will tend for the most part
to some sterner and more overwhelming conception of the sum of things.
"Lord, what is man that Thou art mindful of him?" is the cry of
Hebrew piety as well as of modern science; and the "majestas cognita
rerum,"--the recognized majesty of the universe--teaches Lucretius
only the indifference of gods and the misery of men.
But in a well-known passage, in which Lucretius is honoured as he
deserves, we find nevertheless a different view hinted, with an
impressiveness which it had hardly acquired till then. We find
Virgil implying that scientific knowledge of Nature may not be the
only way of arriving at the truth about her; that her loveliness is
also a revelation, and that the soul which is in unison with her is
justified by its own peace.
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