102 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



unlimited self-assertion. He will have to learn the 

 lesson of self-restraint and renunciation. But the 

 practice of self-restraint and renunciation is not 

 happiness, though it may be something much 

 better. 



That man, as a "political animal," is susceptible of 

 a vast amount of improvement, by education, by 

 instruction, and by the application of his intelligence 

 to the adaptation of the conditions of life to his 

 higher needs, I entertain not the slightest doubt. 

 But, so long as he remains liable to error, intellec- 

 tual or moral ; so long as he is compelled to be 

 perpetually on guard against the cosmic forces, 

 whose ends are not his ends, without and within 

 himself ; so long as he is haunted by inexpugnable 

 memories and hopeless aspirations ; so long as the 

 recognition of his intellectual limitations forces him 

 to acknowledge his incapacity to penetrate the 

 mystery of existence ; the prospect of attaining 

 untroubled happiness, or of a state which can, even 

 remotely, deserve the title of perfection, appears to 

 me to be as misleading an illusion as ever was 

 dangled before the eyes of poor humanity. And 

 there have been many of them. 



That which lies before the human race is a con- 

 stant struggle to maintain and improve, in opposition 

 to the State of Nature, the State of Art of an 

 organized polity ; in which, and by which, man 

 may develop a worthy civilization, capable of main- 

 taining and constantly improving itself, until the 

 evolution of our globe shall have entered so far upon 

 its downward course that the cosmic process resumes 

 its sway ; and, once more, the State of Nature 

 prevails over the surface of our planet. 



ccxxxix 



From very low forms up to the highest — in the 

 animal no less than in the vegetable kingdom — 



