We feel keenly about such things, and, when the logic becomes
perplexing, we are apt to grow rhetorical about them. But rhetoric is
only misleading. Whatever the truth may be, it is best that we should
know it; and for truth of any kind we should keep our heads and hearts
as cool as we can.

I will say at once, that, if we had the whole case before us; if we were
taken, like Leibnitz's Tarquin, into the council-chamber of Nature, and
were shown what we really were, where we came from, and where we were
going, however unpleasant it might be for some of us to find ourselves,
like Tarquin, made into villains, from the subtle necessities of "the
best of all possible worlds,"--nevertheless, some such theory as Mr.
Buckle's might possibly turn out to be true. Likely enough, there is
some great "equation of the universe" where the value of the unknown
quantities can be determined. But we must treat things in relation to
our own powers and positions, and the question is, whether the sweep of
those vast curves can be measured by the intellect of creatures of a day
like ourselves.

The "Faust" of Goethe, tired of the barren round of earthly knowledge,
calls magic to his aid. He desires, first, to see the spirit of the
Macrocosmos, but his heart fails him before he ventures that tremendous
experiment, and he summons before him, instead, the spirit of his own
race. There he feels himself at home. The stream of life and the storm
of action, the everlasting ocean of existence, the web and the woof,
and the roaring loom of Time,--he gazes upon them all, and in passionate
exultation claims fellowship with the awful thing before him. But the
majestic vision fades, and a voice comes to him,--"Thou art fellow with
the spirits which thy mind can grasp, not with me."