within the range of uncertainty; and, therefore, necessarily are full of hazard and precariousness:  little or nothing issues as we expect; we look for pleasure and we find pain; we shun one pain and find a greater; and thus arises the ineffectual character which we so complain of in life—­ the disappointments, failures, mortifications which form the material of so much moral meditation on the vanity of the world.  Much of all this is inevitable from the constitution of our nature.  The mind is too infirm to be entirely occupied with higher knowledge.  The conditions of life oblige us to act in many cases which cannot be understood by us except with the utmost inadequacy; and the resignation to the higher will which has determined all things in the wisest way, is imperfect in the best of us.  Yet much is possible, if not all; and, although through a large tract of life “there comes one event to all, to the wise and to the unwise,” “yet wisdom excelleth folly as far as light excelleth darkness.”  The phenomena of experience by inductive experiment, and just and careful consideration, arrange themselves under laws uniform in their operation, and furnishing a guide to the judgment; and over all things, although the interval must remain unexplored for ever, because what we would search into is Infinite, may be seen the beginning of all things, the absolute eternal God.  “Mens humana,” Spinoza continues, “quaedam agit, quaedam vero patitur.”  In so far as it is influenced by inadequate ideas, “eatenus patitur”—­it is passive and in bondage, it is the sport of fortune and caprice:  in so far as its ideas are adequate, “eatenus agit”—­it is active, it is itself.  While we are governed by outward temptations, by the casual pleasures, the fortunes or the misfortunes of life, we are but instruments, yielding ourselves to be acted upon as the animal is acted on by its appetites, or the inanimate matter by the laws which bind it—­we are slaves—­instruments, it may be, of some higher purpose in the order of nature, but in ourselves nothing; instruments which are employed for a special work, and which are consumed in effecting it.  So far, on the contrary, as we know clearly what we do, as we understand what we are, and direct our conduct not by the passing emotion of the moment, but by a grave, clear, and constant knowledge of what is really good, so far we are said to act—­we are ourselves the spring of our own activity—­we desire the genuine well-being of our entire nature, and that we can always find, and it never disappoints us when found.

All things desire life, seek for energy, and fuller and ampler being.  The component parts of man, his various appetites and passions, are seeking for this while pursuing each its own immoderate indulgence; and it is the primary law of every single being that it so follows what will give it increased vitality.  Whatever will contribute to such increase is the proper good of each; and the good of man as a united being