to think
that the gulf must be vast if tear or word, as it fell, could send
forth so confused and muffled a sound.

7

Such a conception of life is not healthy, whatever show of reason it
may seem to possess; and I would not allude to it here were it not for
the fact that we find this idea, or one closely akin to it, governing
the hearts of most men, however tranquil, or thoughtful, or earnest
they may be, at the approach of the slightest misfortune. There is
evidently a side to our nature which, notwithstanding all we may learn
and master and the certitudes we may acquire, destines us never to be
other than poor, weak, useless creatures, consecrated to death, and
playthings of the vast and indifferent forces that surround us. We
appear for an instant in limitless space, our one appreciable mission
the propagation of a species that itself has no appreciable mission in
the scheme of a universe whose extent and duration baffle the most
daring, most powerful brain. This is a truth; it is one of those
profound but sterile truths which the poet may salute as he passes on
his way; but it is a truth in the neighbourhood of which the man with
the thousand duties who lives in the poet will do well not to abide too
long. And of truths such as this many are lofty and deserving of all
our respect, but in their domain it were unwise to lay ourselves down
and sleep. So many truths environ us that it may safely be said that
few men can be found, of the wickedest even, who have not for counsel
and guide a grave and respectable truth. Yes, it is a truth--the
vastest, most certain of truths, if one will--that our life is nothing,
and our efforts the merest jest; our existence, that of our planet,
only a miserable accident in the history of worlds; but it is no less a
truth that, to us, our life and our planet are the most important, nay,
the only important phenomena in the history of worlds. And of these
truths which is the truer? Does the first of necessity destroy the
second? Without the second, should we have had the courage to
formulate the first? The one appeals to our imagination, and may be
helpful to it in its own domain; but the other directly interests our
actual life. It is well that each have its share. The truth that is
undoubtedly truest from the human point of view must evidently appeal
to us more than the truth which is truest from the universal point of
view. Ignorant as we are of the aim of the univers