which scientific investigations tended to
sweep away. Science seemed to reveal the absolute pettiness, the
minute insignificance of all created things, to show how inconsiderable
a space each separate individual occupied in the sum of forces; the
thought weighed heavily upon Hugh that he was only as the tiniest of
the drops of water in a vast cataract that had rushed for thousands of
years to the sea; it was a paralysing conception. It was true that the
water-drop had a definite place; yet it was the outcome and the victim
of monstrous forces; it leapt from the mountain to the river, it ran
from the river to the sea; it was spun into cloud-wreaths; it fell on
the mountain-top again; it was perhaps congealed for centuries in some
glacier-bed; then it was free again to pursue its restless progress.
But to feel that one was like that, was an unutterably dreary and
fatiguing thought. The weary soul perhaps was hurried thus from zone
to zone of life, never satisfied, never tranquil; with a deep instinct
for freedom and tranquillity, yet never tranquil or free. Then, into
this hopeless and helpless prospect, came the august message of poetry,
revealing the transcendent dignity, the solitariness, the majesty of
the indomitable soul; bidding one remember that though one was a humble
atom in a vast scheme, yet one had the sharp dividing sense of
individuality; that each individual was to himself the measure of all
things, a fortress of personality; that one was not merely whirled
about in a mechanical order; but that each man was as God Himself, able
to weigh and survey the outside scheme of things, to approve and to
disapprove; and that the human will was a mysterious stronghold,
impregnable, secure, into which not even God Himself could intrude
unsummoned. How small a thing to the eye of the scientist were the
human passions and designs, the promptings of instinct and nature; but
to the eye of the poet how sublime and august! These tiny creatures
could be dominated by emotions--love, honour, patriotism,
liberty--which could enable them, frail and impotent as they were, to
rise majestically above the darkest and saddest limitations of
immortality. They could be racked with pain, crushed, tormented,
silenced; but nothing could make them submit, nothing could force them
to believe that their pains were just. Herein lay the exceeding
dignity of the human soul, that it could arraign its Creator before its
own judgment-seat,