like, but in this view--and in this view alone--never for despair! Those
visions, delicious or poignant, are a moral end in themselves. The rest
is our affair--the laughter, the tears, the tenderness, the indignation,
the high tranquillity of a steeled heart, the detached curiosity of
a subtle mind--that's our affair! And the unwearied self-forgetful
attention to every phase of the living universe reflected in our
consciousness may be our appointed task on this earth--a task in which
fate has perhaps engaged nothing of us except our conscience, gifted
with a voice in order to bear true testimony to the visible wonder, the
haunting terror, the infinite passion, and the illimitable serenity; to
the supreme law and the abiding mystery of the sublime spectacle.

Chi lo sa? It may be true. In this view there is room for every religion
except for the inverted creed of impiety, the mask and cloak of arid
despair; for every joy and every sorrow, for every fair dream, for every
charitable hope. The great aim is to remain true to the emotions called
out of the deep encircled by the firmament of stars, whose infinite
numbers and awful distances may move us to laughter or tears (was it the
Walrus or the Carpenter, in the poem, who "wept to see such quantities
of sand"?), or, again, to a properly steeled heart, may matter nothing
at all.

The casual quotation, which had suggested itself out of a poem full of
merit, leads me to remark that in the conception of a purely spectacular
universe, where inspiration of every sort has a rational existence, the
artist of every kind finds a natural place; and among them the poet as
the seer par excellence. Even the writer of prose, who in his less noble
and more toilsome task should be a man with the steeled heart, is worthy
of a place, providing he looks on with undimmed eyes and keeps laughter
out of his voice, let who will laugh or cry. Yes! Even he, the prose