AN OUTLOOK UPON LIFE 



the scientific spirit, the desire to prove all things, 

 and to hold fast to that which is good. It is the con- 

 ditions of proof that have become strenuous and 

 exacting. The standard of the good has not gone 

 up so much as the standard of evidence. We prove 

 a thing now not by an appeal to a text of some book, 

 or to any ecclesiastical court, but by an appeal to 

 reason. An appeal to conscience is not conclusive, 

 because conscience is more or less the creature of 

 the hour, or of custom, or of training, but reason 

 emancipates us from all false or secondary consider- 

 ations, and enables us to see the thing as it is, in and 



of itself. 



in 



I have drifted into deeper waters than I intended 

 to when I set out. I meant to have kept nearer the 

 shore. I have had, I say, a happy life. When I was 

 a young man (twenty-five), I wrote a little poem 

 called "Waiting," which has had quite a history, 

 and the burden of which is, " My own shall come to 

 me." What my constitution demands, the friends, 

 the helps, the fulfillments, the opportunities, I shall 

 find somewhere, some time. It was a statement of 

 the old doctrine of the elective affinities. Those 

 who are born to strife and contention find strife 

 and contention ready at their hand ; those who are 

 born for gentleness and love find gentleness and 

 love drawn to them. The naturally suspicious and 

 distrustful find the world in conspiracy against 

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