Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/338

302 within me; it is startled by a fresh truth, it is dumb also; it too sets up sneer when the month, in its rapture, calls out something; it too enjoys the sweet malice of its silence. I begin to late speaking, nay, thinking. Is not every word which I hear accompanied by the mockery of error, imagination, insanity ? Must I not laugh at my pity and mock at my own mockery? Oh sea, ohi night, ye are sad teachers! Ye teach man how to strip off his humanity. Shall he follow you? Shall he grow, like you, pale, glittering, dumb, immense, looking down reposefully upon himself?—exalted above himself? —is yet, the errors have been the consolatory powers; now we expect the same effects from the accepted truths, and have been waiting a pretty long time. What if the truths could not give this very thing—comfort? Would this be an objection to truthıs? What have these in common with the plights of suffering, worn, sick people, that they more than others should be of use to them? It is certainly no proof against the truth of a plant when it becomes an established fact that it nowise contributes to the recovery of sick persons. But formerly people were so deeply convinced of man being the sole purpose of Nature, that they forthwith believe that even knowledge could not disclose anything but what was salutary and