Cosmic Religionthat. We don’t have the perceptions except very, very dimly
that there maybe something beyond there and bigger there
and that we can’t conceive of... I think it unscientifi c to rule
out the possibility that there may be things there that we
don’t know about.Set Attenborough’s thoughts alongside a few more lines from
the poet Thomas Traherne. He was also fascinated by the world
opened up by new optical techniques – in his case not cameras
but microscopes – and the way they revealed hidden wonders.
The magnifi ed sight of the ‘curious and high stomached’ fl y
caught his imagination in particular. Their ‘burnished and
resplendent’ bodies like ‘orient gold or polished steel’ evoked a
virtual encomium from his pen.
The infi nite workmanship about his body, the marvellous
consistence of his limbs, the most neat and exquisite distinc-
tion of his joints, the subtle and imperceptible ducture of his
nerves, and endowments of his tongue, and ears, and eyes,
and nostrils; the stupendous union of his soul and body, the
exact and curious symmetry of all his parts, the feeling of his
feet and the swiftness of his wings, the vivacity of his quick
and active power...Traherne continues at some length. And the effect of his praise,
not unlike the natural history fi lm, is a growing admiration,
even fondness, for the ‘sucking parts’ and ‘buzzing wings’ of
these dipterous beasts. That would be remarkable enough.
But, like Attenborough contemplating the spider, Traherne’s
thoughts lead him further. So amazing is the fl y, he writes, that
it ‘would make him seem like a treasure wherein all wonders
were shut up together, and that God had done as much in little
there, as he had done at large in the whole world.’
The point is that the ‘personality of spiders’ and the ‘divine
treasures’ of the fl y are not and never could be scientifi c descrip-
tions. Write like that in a scientifi c journal, and you would be