Page:Artabanzanus (Ferrar, 1896).djvu/23

Rh Where are now the vile and crooked rascalities of the human hive—its pride, its venom, its avarice, and its arrogance? I even lose thought of my companions. I am alone, but surrounded with beings of another world. In this silent, impressive solitude I ask what I really am—a being destined to live for ever, armed with a dreadful power, or a poor, miserable creature of despicable clay, doomed to sleep the eternal sleep, or live on for centuries in the shadow of death? Why do I live and have power to move and think? And what awful power is that which prevents me from losing the command of my own strength, and falling headlong from the lop of this precipice? What am I now? A mere insect of life, a mere atom of matter, which a sudden gust of wind might blow, shrieking or senseless, into that profound abyss.

Ha, ha! what is the value, I should like to know, of the boasted highly-prized philosophy of mankind, and who are those men who dare to place their own limits on the power of the great Creator? If there is any scene to be surveyed in the world likely to convince such men of their own insignificance, it is one like this. It is like a looking-glass with two opposing surfaces. It can show the beholder how small he really is, and still how great and magnificent he can become. If his body is a mere atom compared to the mountain, he is gifted with an intellect which can grasp and understand it. But let him not be presumptuous; his metaphysical philosophy is—at least, the greater part of it is—nothing but conjecture.

What do I see? What do I hear? The faint pale-blue glimmering of approaching lightning, the muffled mutterings of distant thunder, the gushing sounds of torrents of rain renewing the life of the thirsty, sun-baked earth, the hoarse growling of the wild hurricane still chained up far away over the sea, the convulsive pantings of the earthquake destined to