HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 581 



this ; he trusts himself to the open sea, because he knows that he is 

 pretty well nnxtched against the necessity he provokes, though he 

 cannot know that he is the superior because he can calculate a good 

 many of the dangers, though not all. 



This is the case in each of the separate undertakings that make up 

 life. To each of thera belongs its appropriate knowledge, upon which 

 our equanimity and repose of mind, as far as the particular undertak- 

 ing is concerned, depend. But life itsef, taken as a whole, is an un- 

 dertaking. Life itself has its objects which make it interesting to \is, 

 which lead us to bear the burden of it. These objects, like those 

 minor ones, are only to be attained by a struggle between the power 

 Will and the weight Nature, and in this struggle also both energy 

 and success depend upon a certain knowledge which may enable us to 

 apply the power with advantage. But the knowledge required in this 

 case is of a more general kind ; it is not a knowledge confined to cer- 

 tain sets of phenomena, and giving us a power correspondingly limited, 

 but it is a general knowledoe of the relation in which human life stands 

 to the universe, and of the means by which life may be brought into 

 the most satisfactory adaptation to it. Now, by what name shall we 

 call this knowledge ? 



Every one has his general views of human life, which are more or 

 less distinct. Upon these general views more than upon any thing- 

 else connected with the understanding depends the character of every 

 one's life. Morality is theoretically independent of all such views, but 

 practically and in the long-run it varies with them. What has life to 

 give ? How far does it lend itself to our ideals ? These are practi- 

 cally questions quite as important to morality as those which lie with- 

 in the province of morality itself as the questions, what are or what 

 ought to be our ideals ? They are also quite as important to human 

 happiness as all particular measures contrived to increase human hap- 

 piness. No man fights with any heart if he thinks he has Nature 

 against him. If a man believes that men are not made to be happy, 

 he will lose the energy to do even what can be done for their happi- 

 ness ; he will give up the pursuit of virtue if he meets with more than 

 a cei-tain degree of discouragement in it. 



Of an unfavorable view of human life there are three principal 

 consequences crime, languor, and suicide. The majority of crimes, 

 and still more of meannesses, it seems to me, are not committed from 

 bad intentions, but from a despair of human life. " I am sorry, but I 

 must do it ; I am driven to it ; everybody has to do it ; we must look 

 at things as they are ; " these ai'e the reflections which lead men into 

 breaches of morality. " Sic vimtur^'' says Cicero, selling Tullia. The 

 feeling that life will not allow people to do always what is right, faint 

 perhaps in each individual mind, grows strong when many who share 

 it come together: it grows stronger by being uttered, stronger still 

 by being acted upon ; it creates an atmosphere of laxity ; morality 



