4

Yet, without renouncing, it is not well that we should feed ourselves upon too petty illusions. We should always keep before our eyes certain verities which put us in our place. There is no doubt that we shall never know everything; and so long as we do not know everything we shall be just as though we knew nothing. It is extremely possible, as the Rig-Veda suggests, that God Himself, or the first cause, does not know everything. It is equally possible that the universe has not yet, in any of its parts, become conscious of itself; that it knows not whence it came nor whither it is going, what it was nor what it will be, what it has accomplished nor what it is seeking to accomplish; and, on the other hand, it is probable that, if it has not yet learnt these things, it will never learn them, seeing that, as I have already said, there is no reason why it should be able, in the infinity of time which will come after us, to do what it has not been able to do in the infinity of time which went before.