as generally a noble
man and martyr has to do,--not for nothing; no, but for a divine
something, other than _he_ had altogether calculated. We will
now quit this of the hard, organic, but limited Feudal Ages; and
glance timidly into the immense Industrial Ages, as yet all
inorganic, and in a quite pulpy condition, requiring desperately
to harden themselves into some organism!

Our Epic having now become _Tools and the Man,_ it is more than
usually impossible to prophesy the Future. The boundless Future
does lie there, predestined, nay already extant though unseen;
hiding, in its Continents of Darkness, 'good hap and sorrow:'
but the supremest intelligence of man cannot prefigure much of
it:--the united intelligence and effort of All Men in all coming
generations, this alone will gradually prefigure it, and figure
and form it into a seen fact! Straining our eyes hitherto, the
utmost effort of intelligence sheds but some most glimmering
dawn, a little way into its dark enormous Deeps: only huge
outlines loom uncertain on the sight; and the ray of prophecy,
at a short distance, expires. But may we not say, here as
always, Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof! To shape the
whole Future is not our problem; but only to shape faithfully a
small part of it, according to rules already known. It is
perhaps possible for each of us, who will with due earnestness
inquire, to ascertain clearly what he, for his own part, ought to
do: this let him, with true heart, do, and continue doing. The
general issue will, as it has always done, rest well with a
Higher Intelligence than ours.

One grand 'outline,' or even two, many earnest readers may
perhaps, at this stage of the business, be able to prefigure for
themselves,--and draw some guidance from. One prediction, or
even two, are already possible. For the Life-tree Igdrasil, in
all its new developments, is the selfsame world-old Life-tree:
having found an element or elements there, running from the very
roots of it in Hela's Realms, in the Well of Mimer and of the
Three Nornas or TIMES, up to this present hour of it in our own
hearts, we conclude that such will have to continue. A man has,
in his own soul, an Eternal; can read something of the Eternal
there, if he will look! He already knows what will continue;
what cannot, by any means or appliance whatsoever, be made
to continue!

One wide and widest 'outline' ought really, in all ways, to be
becoming c