even agnostic. And, indeed, on this point I am all for the higher
agnosticism; its better name is Ignorance. We have all read in
scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who
has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and
appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every
man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may
understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than
any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know
thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all
forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that
we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism
only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we
have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means
that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

But though (like the man without memory in the novel) we walk the
streets with a sort of half-witted admiration, still it is admiration.
It is admiration in English and not only admiration in Latin. The wonder
has a positive element of praise. This is the next milestone to be
definitely marked on our road through fairyland. I shall speak in the
next chapter about optimists and pessimists in their intellectual
aspect, so far as they have one. Here I am only trying to describe the
enormous emotions which cannot be described. And the strongest emotion
was that life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstacy
because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an
opportunity. The goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact
that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a
fairy tale. The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful,
though I hardly knew to whom. Children are grateful when Santa Claus
puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful