themselves bear many scars and ugly indents, while the sea of human
difficulty presents the same unwrinkled appearance in all ages. Yet
it has been driven back.

Ellesmere. But has it lost any of its bulk, or only gone elsewhere?
One part of the resemblance certainly is that these same rocks,
which were bulwarks, become, in their turn, dangers.

Milverton. Yes, there is always loss in that way. It is seldom
given to man to do unmixed good. But it was not this aspect of the
simile that I was thinking of: it was the scarred appearance.

Dunsford. Scars not always of defeat or flight; scars in the front.

Milverton. Ah, it hardly does for us to talk of victory or defeat,
in these cases; but we may look at the contest itself as something
not bad, terminate how it may. We lament over a man's sorrows,
struggles, disasters, and shortcomings; yet they were possessions
too. We talk of the origin of evil and the permission of evil. But
what is evil? We mostly speak of sufferings and trials as good,
perhaps, in their result; but we hardly admit that they may be good
in themselves. Yet they are knowledge--how else to be acquired,
unless by making men as gods, enabling them to understand without
experience. All that men go through may be absolutely the best for
them--no such thing as evil, at least in our customary meaning of
the word. But, you will say, they might have been created different
and higher. See where this leads to. Any sentient being may set up
the same claim: a fly that it had not been made a man; and so the
end would be that each would complain of not being all.