great mediating principle. See, at the foot of the Alps, yon miserable
_crétin_, which, eyeless, smileless, tearless, is not even conscious of
its own degradation, and which looks like an effort of nature to insult
itself in the dishonor of the greatest of its own productions: but
beware how you imagine that that wretched object has not found the road
to any heart, or that his debasement has deprived him of the love of all
the world. No: he is beloved; he has a mother, he has brothers and
sisters; he has a place at the cottage-hearth; he has the best place and
the most sacred of all, just because of all he may seem to have the
least claim to any. The bosom which nursed him supports him still, and
the superstition of love never speaks of him but as of a blessing sent
of God. Such is man!

"But can I say, Such is man, without saying also, Such is God! From whom
would man derive goodness, if God were not the primordial Ocean of
goodness, and if, when He formed our heart, He had not first of all
poured into it a drop from His own? Yes, God is good; yes, goodness is
the attribute which includes in it all the rest; and it is not without
reason that antiquity engraved on the pediment of its temples that
famous inscription, in which goodness preceded greatness."

Now, to say nothing of the sparkling beauty of these words, let us pause
at this definite idea: The Eternal, the first universal Cause of all
things, independently of which nothing exists, could only create under
the impelling motive of the goodness which gives, and not of the love
which seeks requital. This proposition is as clear in the abstract as
any theorem of geometry. But we have touched the threshold of the
infinite; and we never touch the threshold of the infinite without
falling into some degree of bewilderment. Clear as this thought is in
the abstract, if we wish to analyze it in its real substance, our view