's dictum is not very profound: policy is only the
merest fragment of fatality; and his destiny very soon made it manifest
to him that the desire to contain fatality within the narrow bounds of
policy was no more than a vain endeavour to imprison in a fragile vase
the mightiest of the spiritual rivers that bathe our globe. And yet,
incomplete as this thought of Napoleon's may have been, it still throws
some light on a tributary of the great river. It was a little thing,
perhaps, but on these uncertain shores it is the difference between a
little thing and nothing that kindles the energy of man and confirms
his destiny. By this ray of light, such as it was, he long was enabled
to dominate all that portion of the unknown which he declined to term
fatality. To us who come after him, the portion of the unknown that he
controlled may well seem insufficient, if surveyed from an eminence,
and yet it was truly one of the vastest that the eye of man has ever
embraced. Through its means every action of his was accomplished, for
evil or good. This is not the place to judge him, or even to wonder
whether the happiness of a century might not have been better served
had he allowed events to guide him; what we are considering here is the
docility of the unknown. For us, with our humbler destinies, the
problem still is the same, and the principle too; the principle being
that of Goethe: "to stand on the outermost limit of the conceivable;
but never to overstep this line, for beyond it begins at once the land
of chimeras, the phantoms and mists of which are fraught with danger to
the mind." It is only when the intervention of the mysterious,
invisible, or irresistible becomes strikingly real, actually
perceptible, intelligent, and moral, that we are entitled to yield or
lay down our arms, meekly accepting the inactive silence they bring;
but their intervention, within these limits, is rarer than one
imagines. Let us recognise that mystery of this kind exists; but,
until it reveal itself, we have not the right to halt, or relax our
efforts; not the right to cast down our eyes in submission, or resign
ourselves to silence.

III

THE KINGDOM OF MATTER

1

In a preceding essay we were compelled to admit that, eager as man
might be to discover in the universe a sanction for his virtues,
neither heaven nor earth displayed the least interest in human
morality; and that all things would combine to persuade the upright
among