Wonder is a more general feeling than surprise; in a way, quieter.
When wonder is good, the self does not feel little, or mortified, or skulking. It sees otherness, strangeness, as close to it; not in competition with it. Wonder, in this good sense, has the self courageous, accepting, growing. In the bad sense, wonder is allied to such terms as puzzlement, stupefaction, annoyance.
That things should be at all, is wonderful. That existence should be, that reality should be, that space should be, that time should be, that motion should be—are all as wonderful as anything. Since these sizable, immediate things are present in any situation, wonder is present in any situation.—That we and they should be, is also wonderful.
Wonder is knowledge making the unknown more immediate, closer. All knowledge can lead to this.
The self has a hugging propensity and an extending propensity. When, concentrating on something, the self sees extension, new territory, the hitherto unseen, a rising and widening and stirring of what this self is—wonder has come to be.
There can be no wonder without knowledge. A baby just born does not wonder. It doesn’t know enough to do so. Later in the baby’s life, there can be wonder; because by then the child can have such a stock of knowledge that the unknown, the unexpected, the other—can be felt.
The fact that knowledge has to be before there can be wonder, holds good all the time. The sense of otherness, the unknown, the unpatterned, the uncaptured, must be solid, and wide, and deep. If there is not knowledge, the unknown is taken casually—even though there may seem to be excitement. For what makes wonder about the unknown a bigger thing, nearer complete as wonder, is the feeling that the unknown can be known—even while it isn’t. And this feeling that the unknown can be known, is big in proportion to how much we know already. For the same reason that a dog does not wonder at the most beautiful princess—because the dog does not, as dog, feel close enough to the beautiful princess: so a person may not wonder at a wonderful thing—because his life, as yet, has not been akin to that thing. Wonder has its standards, motives, causes.