3.  Is it idle to speak of justice, happiness, morals, and all things connected therewith, before the hour of science has sounded—­ that definitive hour, wherein all that we cling to may crumble?  The darkness that hangs over our life will then, it may be, pass away; and much that we do in the darkness shall be otherwise done in the light.  But nevertheless do the essential events of our moral and physical life come to pass in the darkness as completely, as inevitably, as they would in the light, Our life must be lived while we wait for the word that shall solve the enigma, and the happier, the nobler our life, the more vigorous shall it become; and we shall have the more courage, clear-sightedness, boldness, to seek and desire the truth.  And happen what may, the time can be never ill-spent that we give to acquiring some knowledge of self.  Whatever our relation may become to this world in which we have being, in our soul there will yet be more feelings, more passions, more secrets unchanged and unchanging, than there are stars that connect with the earth, or mysteries fathomed by science.  In the bosom of truth undeniable, truth all absorbing, man shall doubtless soar upwards; but still, as he rises, still shall his soul unerringly guide him; and the grander the truth of the universe, the more solace and peace it may bring, the more shall the problems of justice, morality, happiness, love, present to the eyes of all men the semblance they ever have worn in the eyes of the thinker.  We should live as though we were always on the eve of the great revelation; and we should be ready with welcome, with warmest and keenest and fullest, most heartfelt and intimate welcome.  And whatever the form it shall take on the day that it comes to us, the best way of all to prepare for its fitting reception is to crave for it now, to desire it as lofty, as perfect, as vast, as ennobling as the soul can conceive.  It must needs be more beautiful, glorious, and ample than the best of our hopes; for, where it differ therefrom or even frustrate them, it must of necessity bring something nobler, loftier, nearer to the nature of man, for it will bring us the truth.  To man, though all that he value go under, the intimate truth of the universe must be wholly, preeminently admirable.  And though, on the day it unveils, our meekest desires turn to ashes and float on the wind, still shall there linger within us all we have prepared; and the admirable will enter our soul, the volume of its waters being as the depth of the channel that our expectation has fashioned.

4.  Is it necessary that we should conceive ourselves to be superior to the universe?  Our reason may prove what it will:  our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature; a tiny atom of that whole which Nature alone shall judge.  Is it fitting that the ray of light should desire to alter the lamp whence it springs?