In the anomalies of fortune we feel the
mystery of our mortal existence; and in the companionship of the
illustrious natures who have shaped the fortunes of the world, we escape
from the littlenesses which cling to the round of common life, and our
minds are tuned in a higher and nobler key.
For the rest, and for those large questions which I touched in
connection with Mr. Buckle, we live in times of disintegration, and none
can tell what will be after us. What opinions, what convictions, the
infant of to-day will find prevailing on the earth, if he and it live
out together to the middle of another century, only a very bold man
would undertake to conjecture. "The time will come," said Lichtenberg,
in scorn at the materializing tendencies of modern thought,--"the time
will come when the belief in God will be as the tales with which old
women frighten children; when the world will be a machine, the ether a
gas, and God will be a force." Mankind, if they last long enough on the
earth, may develop strange things out of themselves; and the growth of
what is called the Positive Philosophy is a curious commentary on
Lichtenberg's prophecy.
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