ll sane men shall see them henceforward.

Thus, if the innovator be a religious soul, grown conscious of some new
spiritual principle, he will try to find support for his inspiration in
some lost book of the law or in some early divine revelation corrupted,
as he will assert, by wicked men, or even in some direct voice from
heaven; no delusion will be too obvious, no re-interpretation too
forced, if it can help him to find external support somewhere for his
spontaneous conviction. To denounce one authority he needs to invoke
another, and if no other be found, he will invent or, as they say, he
will postulate one. His courage in facing the actual world is thus
supported by his ability to expand the world in imagination. In
separating himself from his fellow-men he has made a new companion out
of his ideal. An impetuous spirit when betrayed by the world will cry,
"I know that my redeemer liveth"; and the antiphonal response will come
more wistfully after reflection:

"It fortifies my soul to know
That though I wander, Truth is so."

[Sidenote: Significant symbols revert to the concrete.]

The deceptions which nature practises on men are not always cruel. These
are also kindly deceptions which prompt him to pursue or expect his own
good when, though not destined to come in the form he looks for, this
good is really destined to come in some shape or other. Such, for
instance, are the illusions of romantic love, which may really terminate
in a family life practically better than the absolute and chimerical
unions which that love had dreamed of. Such, again, are those illusions
of conscience which attach unspeakable vague penalties and repugnances
to acts which commonly have bad results, though these are impossible to
forecast with precision. When disillusion comes, while it may bring a
momentary shock, it ends by producing a settled satisfaction unknown
before, a satisfaction which the coveted prize, could it have been
attained, would hardly have secured. When on the day of judgment, or
earlier, a man perceives that what he thought he was doing for the
Lord's sake he was really doing for the benefit of the least, perhaps,
of the Lord's creatures, his satisfaction, after a moment's surprise,
will certainly be very genuine.

[Sidenote: Nature a symbol for destiny.]

Such kindly illusions are involved in the symbolic method by which
general relations and the inconceivably diffuse reality of things have
to be apprehen