330 EVOLUTION AND MAN*S PLACE IN NATURE 



rendered to our race by Divine Revelation, we con 

 tinue overawed by the vast range of unexplained 

 existence. This testimony to Ignorance is the last wit 

 ness of science ; and to this there is yielded unanim 

 ous assent, the more ready in utterance, the more 

 extended in significance, in proportion to the breadth 

 of knowledge possessed by a man. Human existence 

 is girt round with mystery : the narrow region of our 

 experience is a small island in the midst of a bound 

 less sea, which at once awes our feelings, and 

 stimulates our imagination, by its vastness and its 

 obscurity. l A spirit, at once lowly and of large ex 

 pectation, supplies fit index of the true excellence of a 

 rational life. Newton, as he neared the close of his 

 term on the earth, gave utterance to both feelings, as 

 he said: I know not what I may appear to the 

 world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a 

 boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in, 

 now and then, finding a smoother pebble or a prettier 

 shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay 

 all undiscovered before me. 2 This is the utterance 

 of a great thinker, of an instructor of the whole race, 

 who is as a child in spirit, yet presenting the model 

 of a lofty intellectual life. 



Little more remains to be said, as we contemplate 

 for a moment life s close, on coming towards the gates 

 of death. Around this closing moment, all life s 

 mysteries gather in most impressive forms. Nowhere 

 does man more deeply feel how ignorant he is; 

 how uncertain as to what the future may contain. 

 This is a moment which must terminate our relations 



1 Three Essays on Religion, by J. S. Mill, p. 102. 



2 Life of Newton, by Sir David Brewster, vol. ii. p. 407. 



