For two hundred years at least have students of every kind
put forth in every sort of boat on a longer or a shorter voyage of
research across the waters of that unsounded sea. From the paltriest
fishing-craft to such majestic galleys as were steered by Coleridge and
by Goethe, each division of the fleet has done or has essayed its turn of
work; some busied in dredging alongshore, some taking surveys of this or
that gulf or headland, some putting forth through shine and shadow into
the darkness of the great deep. Nor does it seem as if there would
sooner be an end to men's labour on this than on the other sea. But here
a difference is perceptible. The material ocean has been so far mastered
by the wisdom and the heroism of man that we may look for a time to come
when the mystery shall be manifest of its furthest north and south, and
men resolve the secret of the uttermost parts of the sea: the poles also
may find their Columbus. But the limits of that other ocean, the laws of
its tides, the motive of its forces, the mystery of its unity and the
secret of its change, no seafarer of us all may ever think thoroughly to
know.
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