*It is the glory of God to conceal things; it is our honour to search out the things which God has concealed. In
Germany at Easter time they hide coloured eggs about the house and the garden so that the children may amuse themselves
in hunting after them and finding them. It is to some such game of hide-and-seek that we are invited by that power
which planted in us the desire to find out what is concealed, and stored the universe with hidden things so that
we might delight ourselves in discovering them. *And the pleasure of discovery differs from other pleasures in this, that it is shadowed by no fear of excessive gratification on the one hand or of frustration on the other. Other desires perish in their fulfilment, but the desire of knowledge never: the eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing. *Other desires become the occasion of pain through scarcity of the material to gratify them, but not the desire of knowledge: the sum of things to be known is inexhaustible, and however long we read we shall never come to the end of our story-book. So long as the mind of man is what it is, it will continue to rejoice in advancing on the unknown throughout the infinite field of the universe; and the tree of knowledge will remain for ever, as it was in the beginning, a tree to be desired to make one wise. |