BY WAY OF APPENDIX. 
221 
dream, and the realization is not soon. We are 
often like children taken on a journey, who are 
no sooner told of the strange and beautiful objects 
which will gladden their sight at the finish, than 
they begin to eagerly look out for them, although 
they may still be a hundred miles away. We 
can never wholly rid ourselves of the illusion 
that human development will be measured by 
our individual life ; that our larger aspirations, 
which concern the race, are the offspring of our 
brain, and as exclusively our own as the smaller 
hopes that concern ourselves personally ; that their 
fulfilment rests with ourselves, and that they must 
be realized before life ends, or else perish with 
us. I do nob remember that Mr. Sully has men- 
tioned this particular illusion in his excellent book 
on the subject of the mind's self-deceptions. If he 
had done so, he would probably have given, as an 
explanation of it, that, after all, in all aspirations 
which we have, our own well-being and content- 
ment is the object primarily sought after ; that if 
a man wishes for some large good, in which the 
entire human family will participate, it is to him- 
self something as personal as would be the desire 
to see a vicious and idle son reformed, or a 
daughter settled in life and happy in her domestic 
relations. At all events, the feeling in either case 
is the same ; and in either case, if hope be long 
