s or our works,--that
all is of God. Nature will not spare us the smallest leaf of laurel.
All writing comes by the grace of God, and all doing and having. I would
gladly be moral and keep due metes and bounds, which I dearly love, and
allow the most to the will of man; but I have set my heart on honesty in
this chapter, and I can see nothing at last, in success or failure, than
more or less of vital force supplied from the Eternal. The results of
life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the
days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come
and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it
all, but an unlooked-for result. The individual is always mistaken.
He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors,
quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all
are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns
out somewhat new and very unlike what he promised himself.

The ancients, struck with this irreducibleness of the elements of human
life to calculation, exalted Chance into a divinity; but that is to
stay too long at the spark, which glitters truly at one point, but the
universe is warm with the latency of the same fire. The miracle of life
which will not be expounded but will remain a miracle, introduces a new
element. In the growth of the embryo, Sir Everard Home I think noticed
that the evolution was not from one central point, but coactive from
three or more points. Life has no memory. That which proceeds in
succession might be remembered, but that which is coexistent, or
ejaculated from a deeper cause, as yet far from being conscious, knows
not its own tendency. So is it with us, now skeptical or without unity,
because immersed in forms and effects all seeming to be of equal yet
hostile value, and now religious, whilst in the reception of spiritual
law. Bear with these distractions, with this coetaneous growth of the
parts; they will one day be members, and obey one will. On that one
will, on that secret cause, they nail our attention and hope. Life
is hereby melted into an expectation or a religion. Underneath the
inharmonious and trivial particulars, is a musical perfection; the
Ideal journeying always with us, the heaven without rent or seam. Do but
observe the mode of our illumination. When I converse with a profound
mind, or if at any time being alone I have good thoughts, I do not at
o