MAGIC AND WONDER
with Lucretius in loftiness and fervor. His sense of reality, as we saw, kept him from believing in magic; his special gift, it seems, was for wonder on an infinite scale. But he stops with wonder; he would not have mankind seek knowledge for the magic purpose of control. When Adam voices his suspicion that the sun, the moon, and the stars, are not circling the earth, as they appear to be doing, for the sole uneconomic purpose of furnishing light for one man and his wife, Raphael replies with a superb summary of both the Ptolemaic and the Copernican theories, but he advises Adam not to bother his head with either hypothesis, nor to prosecute any scientific inquiry. The great Architect, he says,
"Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge
His secrets to be scann'd by them who ought
Rather admire.…
Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid,
Leave them to God above, Him serve and fear."
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