sight, yet is it possible for us to find in our life something that
shall absorb us to the exclusion of sadness, as her love absorbed
the woman whose words I have quoted. Complaints of injustice grow
less frequent as the brain and the heart expand. It is well to
remind ourselves that in this world, whose fruit we are, all that
concerns us must necessarily be more conformable with our existence
than the most beneficent law of our imagination. The time has
arrived perhaps when man must learn to place the centre of his joys
and pride elsewhere than within himself. As this idea takes firmer
root within us, so do we become more conscious of our helplessness
beneath its overwhelming force; yet is it at the same time borne
home to us that of this force we ourselves form part; and even as we
writhe beneath it, we are compelled to admire, as the youthful
Telemachus admired the power of his father's arm. Our own
instinctive actions awaken within us an eager curiosity, an
affectionate, pleased surprise: why should we not train ourselves
thus to regard the instinctive actions of nature? We love to throw
the dim light of our reason on to our unconsciousness: why not let
it play on what we term the unconsciousness of the universe? We are
no less deeply concerned with the one than the other. "After he has
become acquainted with the power that is in him," said a
philosopher, "one of the highest privileges of man is to realise his
individual powerlessness. Out of the very disproportion between the
infinite which kills us and this nothing that we are, there arises
within us a sensation that is not without grandeur; we feel that we
would rather be crushed by a mountain than done to death by a
pebble, as in war we would rather succumb beneath the charge of
thousands than fall victim to a single arm. And as our intellect
lays bare to us the immensity of our helplessness, so does it rob
defeat of its sting." Who knows? We are already conscious of moments