Page:The North American Review Volume 145.djvu/601

 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CCCLXXIII. DECEMBER, 1887. TJHVERSITAS HOMINUM; OR, THE UNITY OF HISTORY. FOE those who must shortly quit the scene of life, it is an allowable desire to suggest what may be of use to persons who have in prospect a longer tenure ; what may promote thrift and obviate waste in the matter of mental effort ; what may help to invest thought with unity and method, to bring the various and separated movements of growing minds into relation with one another, and to give them their places as portions of the general scheme of life. The old are but too conscious, in retrospect, that their own path of life is a path strewn all along with waste material, and it can hardly be otherwise than seemly and appropriate for them to wish that those who follow them in the long procession of the human race may make fuller profit of their means and opportunities. Like the divine ideal of the human form, ever present to the mind of the Greek artist, the vocation of man is one greater than he can fulfill ; but the unattainable is itself a means of attaining, if it leads and empowers us, as it did him, to reach a point in the scale of progress of which we must otherwise have fallen short. And it will tend to give this subjective unity to study, in its largest sense, if there be a corresponding objective unity in that VOL. CXLV. NO. 373. 39