for the universal longing, whether definite or indefinite, and the
consequent universal disappointment.

We have said that man cannot to himself become the object of
Harmony,--that is, find its proper correlative in himself; and we have
seen that, in his present state, the position is true. How is it,
then, in the world of spirit? Who can answer? And yet, perhaps,--if
without irreverence we might hazard the conjecture,--as a finite
creature, having no centre in himself on which to revolve, may it not
be that his true correlative will there be revealed (if, indeed, it be
not before) to the disembodied man, in the Being that made him? And
may it not also follow, that the Principle we speak of will cease to
be potential, and flow out, as it were, and harmonize with the
eternal form of Hope,--even that Hope whose living end is in the
unapproachable Infinite?

Let us suppose this form of hope to be taken away from an immortal
being who has no self-satisfying power within him, what would be
his condition? A conscious, interminable vacuum, were such a thing
possible, would but faintly image it. Hope, then, though in its nature
unrealizable, is not a mere _notion_; for so long as it continues
hope, it is to the mind an object and an object _to be_ realized;
so, where its form is eternal, it cannot but be to it an ever-during
object. Hence we may conceive of a never-ending approximation to what
can never be realized.

From this it would appear, that, while we cannot to ourselves become
the object of Harmony, it is nevertheless certain, from the universal
desire _so_ to realize it, that we cannot suppress the continual
impulse of this paramount Principle; which, therefore, as it seems to