The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that had been strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free.  “A vain interminable controversy,” writes he, “touching what is at present called Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every soul, since the beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would pass from idle Suffering into actual Endeavoring, must first be put an end to.  The most, in our time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression of this controversy; to a few some Solution of it is indispensable.  In every new era, too, such Solution comes out in different terms; and ever the Solution of the last era has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable.  For it is man’s nature to change his Dialect from century to century; he cannot help it though he would.  The authentic Church-Catechism of our present century has not yet fallen into my hands:  meanwhile, for my own private behoof I attempt to elucidate the matter so.  Man’s Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.  Will the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in joint-stock company, to make one Shoeblack HAPPY?  They cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two:  for the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach; and would require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no less:  God’s infinite Universe altogether to himself, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose.  Oceans of Hochheimer, a Throat like that of Ophiuchus:  speak not of them; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing.  No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage.  Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men.—­Always there is a black spot in our sunshine:  it is even, as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves.

“But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus.  By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right.  It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint; only such overplus as there may be do we account Happiness; any deficit again is Misery.  Now consider that we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and what a fund of Self-conceit there is in each of us,—­do you wonder that the balance should so often dip the wrong way, and many a Blockhead cry:  See there, what a payment; was ever worthy gentleman so used!—­I tell thee, Blockhead, it all comes of thy Vanity; of what thou fanciest those same deserts of thine to be.  Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot:  fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp.