t upon the facts which threaten his hypothesis. He reduces them into
phenomena, in the sense of phantoms begotten by the human intellect upon
unknown and unknowable realities.

"Thus much at least is clearly understood--
Of power does Man possess no particle:
Of knowledge--just so much as shows that still
It ends in ignorance on every side."[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]

He is aware of the phenomena of his own consciousness,

"My soul, and my soul's home,
This body ";

but he knows not whether "things outside are fact or feigning." And he
heeds little, for in either case they

"Teach
What good is and what evil,--just the same,
Be feigning or be fact the teacher."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

It is the mixture, or rather the apparent mixture, of shade and light in
life, the conflict of seeming good with seeming evil in the world, that
constitutes the world a probation-place. It is a kind of moral
gymnasium, crowded with phantoms, wherein by exercise man makes moral
muscle. And the vigour of the athlete's struggle is not in the least
abated by the consciousness that all he deals with are phantoms.

"I have lived, then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt and taught
This--there is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught,
Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim,
If--(to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!)--
If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place,
And life, time--with all their chances, changes,--just probation-space,
Mine, for me."[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]

And the world would not be such a probation-space did we once penetrate
into its inmost secret, and know its phenomena as veritably either good
or evil. There is the need of playing something perilously like a trick
on the human intellect if man is to strive and grow.

"Here and there a touch
Taught me, betimes, the artifice of things--
That all about, external to myself,
Was meant to be suspected,--not revealed
Demonstrably a cheat--but half seen through."[B]

[Footnote B: _A Bean-Stripe._]

To know objects as they veritably are, might reveal all things as locked
together in a scheme of universal good, so that "white would rule
unchecked along the line." But this would be the greatest of disasters;
for, as moral agents, we cannot do without

"the constant shade
Cast on life's shine,--the t