s life can be lived in
the midst of gravest material errors.

3. Is it idle to speak of justice, happiness, morals, and all
things connected therewith, before the hour of science has
sounded--that definitive hour, wherein all that we cling to may
crumble? The darkness that hangs over our life will then, it may be,
pass away; and much that we do in the darkness shall be otherwise done
in the light. But nevertheless do the essential events of our moral and
physical life come to pass in the darkness as completely, as
inevitably, as they would in the light, Our life must be lived while we
wait for the word that shall solve the enigma, and the happier, the
nobler our life, the more vigorous shall it become; and we shall have
the more courage, clear-sightedness, boldness, to seek and desire the
truth. And happen what may, the time can be never ill-spent that we
give to acquiring some knowledge of self. Whatever our relation may
become to this world in which we have being, in our soul there will yet
be more feelings, more passions, more secrets unchanged and unchanging,
than there are stars that connect with the earth, or mysteries fathomed
by science. In the bosom of truth undeniable, truth all absorbing, man
shall doubtless soar upwards; but still, as he rises, still shall his
soul unerringly guide him; and the grander the truth of the universe,
the more solace and peace it may bring, the more shall the problems of
justice, morality, happiness, love, present to the eyes of all men the
semblance they ever have worn in the eyes of the thinker. We should
live as though we were always on the eve of the great revelation; and
we should be ready with welcome, with warmest and keenest and fullest,
most heartfelt and intimate welcome. And whatever the form it shall
take on the day that it comes to us, the best way of all to prepare for
its fitting reception is to crave for it now, to desire it as lofty, as
perfect, as vast, as ennobling as the soul can conceive. It must needs
be more beautiful, glorious, and ample than the best of our hopes; for,
where it differ therefrom or even frustrate them, it must of necessity
bring something nobler, loftier, nearer to the nature of man, for it
will bring us the truth. To man, though all that he value go under, the
intimate truth of the universe must be wholly, preeminently admirable.
And though, on the day it unveils, our meekest desires turn to ashes
and float on the wind, still shall there l