son, that is and ever was. Especially
is there no becoming of reason, and hence no reason for becoming, to a
sufficient intelligence. In the sufficient intelligence all things
always are, and are rational. To say there is something yet to be
which never was, not even in the sufficient intelligence wherein the
world is rational and not a blind and orphan waif, is to ignore all
reason. Aught that might be assumed as contingently coming to be could
only have 'freedom' for its origin; and 'freedom' has not fertility or
invention, and is not a reason for any special thing, but the very
vacuity of a ground for anything in preference to its room. Neither is
there in bare time any principle or originality where anything should
come or go. . . .

"Such idealism enures greatly to the dignity and repose of man. No
blind fate, prior to what is, shall necessitate that all first be and
afterward be known, but knowledge is first, with fate in her own hands.
When we are depressed by the weight and immensity of the immediate, we
find in idealism a wondrous consolation. The alien positive, so vast
and overwhelming by itself, reduces its pretensions when the whole
negative confronts it on our side.[4] It matters little for its
greatness when an equal greatness is opposed. When one remembers that
the balance and motion of the planets are so delicate that the
momentary scowl of an eclipse may fill the heavens with tempest, and
even affect the very bowels of the earth--when we see a balloon, that
carries perhaps a thousand pounds, leap up a hundred feet at the
discharge of a sheet of note paper--or feel it stand deathly still in a
hurricane, because it goes with the hurricane, sides with it, and
ignores the rushing world below--we should realize that one tittle of
pure originality would outweigh this crass objective, and turn these
vast masses into mere breath and tissue-paper show." [5]

But whose is the originality? There is nothing in what I am treating
as this phase of our author's thought to separate it from the
old-fashioned rationalism. There must be a reason for every fact; and
so much reason, so fact. The reason is always the whole foil and
background and negation of the fact, the whole remainder of reality.
"A man may feel good only by feeling better. . . . Pleasure is ever in
the company and contrast of pain; for instance, in thirsting and
drinking, the pleasure of the one is the exact measure of the pain of
the oth