This poem of Omar and of Fitzgerald is perhaps our best expression of
the sadness and the grandeur of insoluble problems. It is the sweetness
of philosophical sorrow which has no kinship with misery or distress. In
the strains of the saddest music the soul finds the keenest delight. The
same sweet, sorrowful pleasure is felt in the play of the mind about the
riddles which it cannot solve.

In the presence of the infinite problem of life, the voice of Science is
dumb, for Science is the coördinate and corrected expression of human
experience, and human experience must stop with the limitations of human
life. Man was not present "When the foundations of the Earth were laid,"
and beyond the certainty that they were laid in wisdom and power, man
can say little about them. Man finds in the economy of nature "no trace
of a beginning; no prospect of an end!" He may feel sure, with Hutton,
that "time is as long as space is wide." But he cannot conceive of space
as actually without limit, nor can he imagine any limiting conditions.
He cannot think of a period before time began, nor of a state in which
time shall be no more. The mind fails before the idea of time's eternal
continuity. So time becomes to man merely the sequence of the earthly
events in which he and his ancestors have taken part. Even thus limited
it is sadly immortal, while man's stay on the earth is but of "few days
and full of trouble." "Oh, but the long, long while this world shall
last!" or as the grim humorist puts it, "we shall be a long time dead."

Though the meaning of time, space, existence lies beyond our reach, yet
some sort of solution of the infinite problem the human heart demands.
We find in life a power for action, limited though this power may be.
Life is action, and action is impossible if devoid of motive or hope.