But what of modern science? Does not that eliminate the mystic element? Far from that, it increases it. The dominant theory is that light is a sensation caused by waves in ether which travel at a speed of 186,000 miles a second. Of this theory Whewell wrote in 1857 that Optics had "reached her grand generalisation in a few years by sagacious and happy speculations." But it was not thus that a halting-place was gained. For there succeeded the discoveries of Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, Hertz, and other great physicists who used the old theory merely as a foundation for a superstructure of unsuspected and wondrous proportions. The theory of electrons came to the front, and the phenomena of light are being linked on to those of electricity. The phenomena of electricity, again, are being linked on to those of life. And thus, as ever where our deepest intuitions are concerned, the nature-mystic finds himself in harmony with and abreast of the latest developments of modern knowledge. At the dawn of human thought light and life were dimly but persistently felt to be akin, if not identical. And now we know it was a deep prompting of mother nature which caused men to give to their divine beings the simple name--"the Bright Ones." CHAPTER XXX THE EXPANSE OF HEAVEN--COLOUR "The broad open eye of the solitary sky." Charles Lamb, with his native sensitiveness, considered this line to be too terrible for art. Its suggestion of "the irresponsive blankness of the universe" was for him too naked and poignant. And yet, in certain of his aspects, nature is undoubtedly irresponsive to man--aloof from his affairs--more especially in her pageantry of the heavens, the sun, the moon and the stars. But this feeling of aloofness is not constant, nor even normal, as witness the exquisite lines in Peter Bell: "At noon, when by the forest's edge He lay beneath the branches high, The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart--he never felt The witchery of the soft blue sky!" Whether in its friendly or its alien aspects, the widespread, all-embracing arch of the heavens has, in all times and climes, profoundly influenced human thought, more particularly so in lands where the sky is clear and bright and the horizons extended. Its effect, in flat and desert regions, on the development of monotheistic beliefs was noted in an early chapter. In India it has played the chiefest part in fostering abstract universalism and the conception of a pantheistic Absolute, and has tempted men to views which leave no room for human initiative nor for belief in objective reality. And when we recognise the wide and deep influence exerted by Buddhism upon ethics and metaphysics ancient and modern, we realise that the dome of heaven has proved itself a mystic force of the first rank.