t the very moment we believed it
had ceased to be, behold it reappeared, and raised its head once more
in the very depths of our heart; and yet another mystery had sought
refuge in man, and embodied itself in him. For it is in ourselves that
the mysteries we seek to destroy almost invariably find their last
shelter and their most fitting abode, the home which they had forsaken,
in the wildness of youth, to voyage through space; as it is in
ourselves that we must learn to meet and to question them. And truly
it is no less wonderful, no less inexplicable, that man should have in
his heart an immutable instinct of justice, than it was wonderful and
inexplicable that the gods should be just, or the forces of the
universe. It is as difficult to account for the essence of our memory,
our will, or intelligence, as it was to account for the memory, will,
or intelligence of the invisible powers or laws of Nature; and if, in
order to enhance our curiosity, we have need of the unknown or
unknowable; if, in order to maintain our ardour, we require mystery or
the infinite, we shall not lose a single tributary of the unknown and
unknowable by at last restoring the great river to its primitive bed;
nor shall we have closed a single road that leads to the infinite, or
lessened by the minutest fraction the most contested of veritable
mysteries. Whatever we take from the skies we find again in the heart
of man. But, mystery for mystery, let us prefer the one that is
certain to the one that is doubtful, the one that is near to the one
that is far, the one that is in us and of us to the harmful one from
without. Mystery for mystery, let us no longer parley with the
messengers, but with the sovereign who sent them; no longer question
those feeble ones who silently vanish at our first inquiry, but rather
look into our heart, where are both question and answer; the answer
which it has forgotten, but, some day perhaps, shall remember.

14

Then we shall be able to solve more than one disconcerting problem as
to the distribution, often very equitable, of reward and punishment
among men. And by this we do not mean only the inward, moral reward
and punishment, but also the reward and punishment that are visible and
wholly material. There was some measure of reason in the belief held
by mankind from its very origin, that justice penetrates, animates as
it were, every object of this world in which we live. This belief has
not been expl