clares, "in my experience--and I speak only of my
own--testifies to the incompleteness of life, nay, even to its
preponderating unhappiness. The strong body is found allied to a stunted
soul. The soaring soul is chained by bodily weakness to the ground. Help
turns to hindrance, or discloses itself too late in what we have taken
for such. Every sweet brings its bitter, every light its shade; love is
cut short by death:"--

"I must say--or choke in silence--'Howsoever came my fate,
Sorrow did and joy did nowise,--life well-weighed,--preponderate.'
By necessity ordained thus? I shall bear as best I can;
By a cause all-good, all-wise, all-potent? No, as I am man!
Such were God: and was it goodness that the good within my range
Or had evil in admixture or grew evil's self by change?
Wisdom--that becoming wise meant making slow and sure advance
From a knowledge proved in error to acknowledged ignorance?
Power? 'tis just the main assumption reason most revolts at! power
Unavailing for bestowment on its creature of an hour,
Man, of so much proper action rightly aimed and reaching aim,
So much passion,--no defect there, no excess, but still the same,--
As what constitutes existence, pure perfection bright as brief
For yon worm, man's fellow-creature, on yon happier world--its leaf!
No, as I am man, I mourn the poverty I must impute:
Goodness, wisdom, power, all bounded, each a human attribute!"
(vol. xiv. p. 183.)

"If we regard this life as final, we must relinquish our conception of
the power of God: for His work is then open to human judgment, in the
light of which it yields only imperfect results."

"But let us once assume that our present state is one of probation,
intended by God as such: and every difficulty is solved. Evil is no
longer a mark of failure in the execution of the Divine Scheme: it
becomes essential to it; my experience indeed represents it as such. I
cannot conceive evil as abolished without abrogation of the laws of
life. For it is not only bound up with all the good of life; it is often
its vehicle. Gain is enhanced by recent loss. Ignorance places us
nearest to knowledge. Beauty is most precious, truth most potent, where
ugliness and falsehood prevail; and what but the loss of Love teaches us
what its true value has been?"

"May I then accept the conclusion that this