224 LIFE IN NATURE. 



times have been wanting in personal modesty, while 

 their aims have been unquestionably good. Hap- 

 pily, the human destiny is ruled by higher powers 

 than the personal characters of men ; nor could it 

 be otherwise than that, in its aspiring vanity, the 

 mind of man should swing from the positive to the 

 negative side from absurd assurance of knowledge 

 to absurder assurance of inability to know before 

 it finally assumed its true level, in a hopeful, labo- 

 rious, and confiding patience. 



When that time comes, I think it will be seen 

 that the real difficulty we have encountered the 

 real source of the despair which has seized so many 

 of our chief thinkers, and has made them (against 

 all their best native instincts and acquired ten- 

 dencies) presume to limit the possible advance of 

 man, even though they thus debarred him precisely 

 from those gifts which are of highest value has 

 been our not expecting enough. We have failed 

 because we had cast our reckoning of God's bounty 

 too low as, indeed, how could we do otherwise ? 

 We have despaired because we could not believe in, 

 nor receive, a gift so rich as He has given us. 



