rld of sorrow, either apostrophizing a
newborn child, or a world of disappointment, bemoaning a mature victim;
neither as in the anguish of meditative reflection, nor in the prudence
of extenuating apology. The grand _sanctus_ which arises from human
sensibility, Perish empires and the crowns of kings, etc., first arose
in connection with Christianity.[30] Life was a good life; man was a
prosperous being. Hope for men was his natural air; despondency the
element of his own self-created folly. Neither could it be otherwise.
For, besides that, it would be too immeasurable a draught of woe to say
in one breath that this only was the crux or affirmation of man's fate,
and yet that this also was wretched _per se_; not accidentally made
wretched by imprudence, but essentially and irrevocably so by necessity
of its nature. Besides all this, which has a lurking dependency upon
man's calculations of what is safe, he sees that this mode of thinking
would leave him nothing; yet even that extreme consequence would not
check some honest or sincere or desperate minds from uttering their
convictions that life really _was_ this desperate game--much to lose
and nothing in the best case to win. So far there would have been a
dangerous gravitation at all times to the sad conclusion of Paganism.
But, meanwhile, this dangerous gravitation was too dangerous, and
Providence has deeply counteracted it by principles laid down in human
nature. I affirm that where the ideas of man, where the possible
infinities are not developed, then also the exorbitant on the other
field is strongly pulled up. No ideals of evil can take place except
under ideals of happiness that passeth all understanding. No synthesis
can ever be executed, that is, no annumeration of A, B, C into a common
total, viewed as elements tending to a common unity, unless previously
this unity has been preconceived, because the elements are not elements,
viz., original constituents of a representative whole (a series tending
to a summation), unless that which is constituted--that whole--is
previously given in idea. Since A and B and C could not be viewed as
tending to a unity, having no existence except through them, unless
previously that unity had existed for the regulation and eduction of its
component elements. And this unity in the case of misery never could
have been given unless far higher functions than any which could endure
Paganism, or which Paganism could endure. Until the s