ction of the littleness of man.
There is not a page of the history of human thought on which this lesson
is not deeply engraved. Still we do not despair. We find a ground of hope
in the very littleness as well as in the greatness of the human powers.

Section IV.

The littleness of the human mind a ground of hope.

We would yield to no one in a profound veneration for the great intellects
of the past. But let us not be dazzled and blinded by the splendour of
their achievements. Let us look at it closely, and see how wonderful it
is--this thing called the human mind. The more I think of it, the more it
fills me with amazement. I scarcely know which amazes me the more, its
littleness or its grandeur. Now I see it, with all its high powers and
glorious faculties, labouring under the ambiguity of a word, apparently in
hopeless eclipse for centuries. Shall I therefore despise it? Before I
have time to do so, the power and the light which is thus shut out from
the world by so pitiful a cause, is revealed in all its glory. I see this
same intelligence forcing its way through a thousand hostile appearances,
resisting innumerable obstacles pressing on all sides around it,
overcoming deep illusions, and inveterate opinions, almost as firmly
seated as the very laws of nature themselves. I see it rising above all
these, and planting itself in the radiant seat of truth. It embraces the
plan, it surveys the work of the Supreme Architect of all things. It
follows the infinite reason, and recognises the almighty power, in their
sublimest manifestations. I rejoice in the glory of its triumphs, and am
ready to pronounce its empire boundless. But, alas! I see it again baffled
and confounded by the wonders and mysteries of a single atom!

I see this same thing, or rather its mightiest representatives, with a
Newton or a Leibnitz at their head, in full pursuit of a shadow, and
wasting their wonderful energies in beating the air. They have measured
the world, and stretched their line upon the chambers of the great deep.
They have weighed the sun, moon, and stars, and marked out their orbits.
They have determined the laws according to which all worlds and all atoms
move--according to which the very spheres sing together. And yet, when they
came to measure "the force of a moving body," they toil for a century at
the task, and finally rest in the amazing conclusion, that "the very same
thing may have t