only are results of a single law opposed, but the laws pull one this
way, one that, as gravitation contends with currents of water and air.
If we could be shut in sense and surface, Nature would seem a game of
cross-purposes, every creature devouring another. The beast eats plant
and beast; he dies, and the plant eats him again; fire, water, and
frost, in their old quarrel, destroy whatever they build; the night eats
the day, summer the snow, and winter the green. Change is a revolving
wheel, in which so many spokes rise, so many fall, a motion returning
into itself. Nature is a circle, but man a spiral. No wonder he is
dissatisfied, with his longing to get on. Eating and hunger, labor and
rest, gathering and spending, there is no gain. Life is consumed in
getting a living. After laborious years our money is ready in bank, but
the man who was to enjoy it is gone from enjoyment, shrivelled with
care, every appetite dried up. So learning devastates the scholar, is
another plague of wealth, and our goodness turns out to be a hasty
mistake. Is order disorder, then? Are we fools of fate? Is there only
power enough to prop up this rickety old system, to keep it running and
hold our noses to the grindstone? No man believes it: the madness of
Time has method only half concealed.

See what eagerness is in the eyes of men, curious, hopeful, dimly aware
of beneficence under all these knocks and denials. There are whispers of
a great destiny for man,--that he is dear to the Cause. We suspect
integrity in Nature. Can this canebrake, in which we are tangled with
care, fear, and sin, be after all single and sincere, a piece of
intelligent kindness? Genius is the opening of this suspicion to
certainty. We are like children who recognize the love which gives them
sugar-plums, but not that which shuts the bag and forbids. Insight goes
deep enough to prize all severity and detect the good of evil.