80 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



moment so fair that, Faust- like, we would fain arrest it for 

 ever, but which nevertheless some fatal or malign power 

 without us or within us prevents us from grasping and 

 making permanently ours. In like manner, our pleasure 

 in the pursuit of truth is broken and fragmentary, though 

 here happily something is always given to the resolute 

 spirit. But its pursuit postulates a preliminary instalment 

 of that peace which it promises to deepen and to make 

 sweeter, and this preliminary amount we usually lack to 

 begin with. If we do not conquer this necessary peace at 

 the point of the sword almost ; if we do not violently take 

 it by force ; that is to say, if we do not shut our eyes to 

 all lesser attractions, and steel our hearts to all competing 

 demands, as only a Spinoza, a Bruno, or a Goethe, as only 

 men great or resolute or possibly devoid of heart can do, 

 then we are scarcely likely tobecome the devoted followers 

 of truth, and we cannot hope to have the peculiar peace 

 and satisfaction which its pursuit and possession brings. 



Finally, our disappointed species has not often as yet 

 found on the earth, but only in the realms of the fancy, 

 that other great and good thing the abiding joy and 

 content from a real communion of soul and affection, the 

 high though different delights of love and friendship. 

 Even here, besides the blight of evanescence, there is the 

 formidable interference of Fate. There is loss total, 

 there is separation, there is estrangement. We can hardly 

 hope to have, or to have for long, that high felicity 

 which our poet describes as the prerogative of spirits in 

 a higher and serener sphere than our earthly one. We 

 cannot here experience 



Such love as spirits feel 



In worlds whose course is equable and pure ; 

 No fears to beat away, no strife to heal, 



The past unsighed for, and the future sure. 



