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investigations. The mathematician, satisfied that twice two makes four-why, he knows not-does not thereupon neglect this important element in his calculations; does not treat it as of little or no consequence. He makes it, on the contrary, the guide, the controlling factor in all his calculations. It informs and overrules his mathematical life. If, by any strange chance, doubt should be thrown on its truth, he would not rest until he had established it, or had found some equivalent truth to replace it.

In like manner I have endeavored, in previous chapters, to show you how and why whatever beliefs you may hold concerning God and the future life ought to become the rule of your conduct; that a right belief is of vital importance if you desire to make anything satisfactory out of your life; if it is to be anything more than a medley of confused and random acts.

God has chosen, for various reasons, some of which are sufficiently obvious, to conceal from us not merely that part of our lives which lies beyond the grave, but even all knowledge of the immediate future in this life. But he has given us reasoning faculties, has enabled us to observe facts and to draw conclusions-in short, to think. I believe that, while he has filled our lives with mysteries which we vainly strive to comprehend, he has not exacted of us either

unreasonable or unreasoning belief; and that in this supremely important matter of the future life we may come to as valid conclusions by inquiry and reasoning as men of science do in many of their investigations from the known to the unknown, or as they also do where their field of facts is large enough -in reasoning from the known to the admittedly unknowable.

To proceed systematically to the inquiry which I urge, it seems advisable to consider first what you really are, what kind of being, and what kind of circumstances surround you.

III.

WHAT ARE YOU?

You are a rational, that is to say, a thinking and reasoning being, brought into existence without your previous knowledge or consent; placed here in circumstances more or less disagreeable; subject to pain and to various kinds of suffering, the least of which, please observe, are those which affect your body; and finally to the decay and dissolution of this body.

You are unable to control your physical life, either in its circumstances or its duration, except to an extremely moderate degree. You are moved by impulses, desires, and passions, almost all of a kind injurious not only to your nobler or spiritual part, but even to your body, and which require your constant attention to control, or even to guide them. Ignorant to a very great extent of the laws of your physical being, your powers are limited on every side by boundaries which no effort of yours, or of all mankind, can do more than widen a very little; for by no means in your reach can you foreknow even what

may happen in the next moment to yourself, or to those dearer to you than your own life. The wisest of mankind is without sufficient knowledge to guard his life securely against danger or distress. Your whole existence here is one continuous uncertainty; and so true is this that, in spite of the wisdom of the most prudent and care-taking, a proverb relates that "it is the unexpected which always happens."

From the moment of your birth but one event is certain for you, and that is your death; and you cannot even foreknow the time when this will come.

As an intelligent being, you have a boundless capacity and desire for knowledge; and you see in the universe, and even on this planet, an illimitable field for inquiry and acquisition. Yet we scarcely begin to know what knowledge is in any branch of life or nature before bodily infirmities and old age impair our physical energies and weaken the organs on whose help we depend for the exercise of our intellectual powers: as the explorer of a strange continent might be crippled on the threshold of his discoveries by the breaking down of his wagons, the death of his horses, or the desertion of his guides.

You can hope, by the utmost efforts of a long life, to know by sight only a small part of the planet on which we live; yet you know that our earth is but one of myriads of worlds, and that our sun and

its planets form only one of the smaller of the systems which crowd the universe. You are surrounded by mysteries which the wisest of our race call "laws," and can no further explain; and if you could master all science and all knowledge, you would only know that man has penetrated with uncertain hands but skin-deep into the infinite.

A great part of our life here is needed to teach us even the most superficial knowledge of the laws of our physical being; and yet all the knowledge we may gain and apply does not suffice to protect us against the gravest calamities or the nost unlooked-for and painful mishaps. You have a desire for virtuous conduct, yet find yourself constantly the prey of tendencies to vice and wrong-doing. Your whole conscious life here, if it is rightly conducted, is necessarily an unremitting strife with your evil propensities, which, on the least indulgence, are prone to become fixed as habits; and with the utmost care we know not at what moment evil will overcome our good intentions.

Plan your life as carefully, as prudently as you may, bend all your energies to the achievement of your purposes, and yet you may discover in the end that your plans were blunders, and that your labors have led only to the disappointment of your hopes.

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