called so in Milton's Eden): I hoarded the hills. For the universe is a
single jewel, and while it is a natural cant to talk of a jewel as
peerless and priceless, of this jewel it is literally true. This cosmos
is indeed without peer and without price: for there cannot be another
one.

Thus ends, in unavoidable inadequacy, the attempt to utter the
unutterable things. These are my ultimate attitudes towards life; the
soils for the seeds of doctrine. These in some dark way I thought before
I could write, and felt before I could think: that we may proceed more
easily afterwards, I will roughly recapitulate them now. I felt in my
bones; first, that this world does not explain itself. It may be a
miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick,
with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick,
if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural
explanations I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I
came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some
one to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work
of art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this
purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as
dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of
humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not
drinking too much of them. We owed, also, an obedience to whatever made
us. And last, and strangest, there had come into my mind a vague and
vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and
held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as
Crusoe saved his goods: he had saved them from a wreck. All this I felt
and the age gave me no encouragement to feel it. And all this time I had
not even thought of Christian theology.