be. It is as hard a task as to find one's
way to the Golden Gate! A man may wreck
himself utterly in sense-pleasure,--may debase
his whole nature, as it seems,--yet he fails
of becoming the perfect devil, for there is still
the spark of divine light within him. He tries
to choose the broad road which leads to
destruction, and enters bravely on his headlong
career. But very soon he is checked and
startled by some unthought-of tendency in
himself,--some of the many other radiations
which go forth from his centre of self. He
suffers as the body suffers when it develops
monstrosities which impede its healthy action.
He has created pain, and encountered his own
creation. It may seem as if this argument is
difficult of application with regard to physical
pain. Not so, if man is regarded from a loftier
standpoint than that we generally occupy. If
he is looked upon as a powerful consciousness
which forms its external manifestations according
to its desires, then it is evident that physical
pain results from deformity in those desires.
No doubt it will appear to many minds that
this conception of man is too gratuitous, and
involves too large a mental leap into unknown
places where proof is unobtainable. But if the
mind is accustomed to look upon life from
this standpoint, then very soon none other is
acceptable; the threads of existence, which
to the purely materialistic observer appear
hopelessly entangled, become separated and
straightened, so that a new intelligibleness
illumines the universe. The arbitrary and cruel
Creator who inflicts pain and pleasure at will
then disappears from the stage; and it is well,
for he is indeed an unnecessary character, and,
worse still, is a mere creature of straw, who
cannot even strut upon the boards without
being upheld on all sides by dogmatists. Man
comes into this world, surely, on the same
principle that he lives in one city of the earth
or another; at all events, if it is too much to
say that this is so, one may safely ask, why is
it not so? There is neither for nor against
which will appeal to the materialist, or which
would weigh in a court of justice; but I aver
this in favor of the argument,--that no man
having once seriously considered it can go back
to the formal theories of the sceptics. It is
like putting on swaddling-clothes again.

Granting, then, for the sake of this argument,
that man is a powerful consciousness
who is his own creator, his own judge, and