e surface were still in a crystalline state.

Again, you may look upon life as an unprofitable episode, disturbing
the blessed calm of non-existence. And, in any case, even though
things have gone with you tolerably well, the longer you live the more
clearly you will feel that, on the whole, life is _a disappointment,
nay, a cheat_.

If two men who were friends in their youth meet again when they are
old, after being separated for a life-time, the chief feeling
they will have at the sight of each other will be one of complete
disappointment at life as a whole; because their thoughts will be
carried back to that earlier time when life seemed so fair as it
lay spread out before them in the rosy light of dawn, promised so
much--and then performed so little. This feeling will so completely
predominate over every other that they will not even consider it
necessary to give it words; but on either side it will be silently
assumed, and form the ground-work of all they have to talk about.

He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits
some time in the conjurer's booth at a fair, and witnesses the
performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to
be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to
deceive, their effect is gone.

While no man is much to be envied for his lot, there are countless
numbers whose fate is to be deplored.

Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say _defunctus est_;
it means that the man has done his task.

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason
alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather
have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the
burden of existence? or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose
that burden upon it in cold blood.

I shall be told, I suppose, that my philosophy is comfortless--because
I speak the truth; and people prefer to be assured that everything the
Lord has made is good. Go to the priests, then, and leave philosophers
in peace! At any rate, do not ask us to accommodate our doctrines to
the lessons you have been taught. That is what those rascals of sham
philosophers will do for you. Ask them for any doctrine you please,
and you will get it. Your University professors are bound to preach
optimism; and it is an easy and agreeable task to upset their
theories.

I have reminded the reader that every state of welfare, every feelin