We had to face the trials of our friends, and we had to face death.  I do not say for an instant that we had any effectual reply to these great arguments against us.  We never so much as sought for one, knowing how all men had sought and failed.  But we were able to say there is some compensation, that there is another side, and this is all that man can say.  No theory of the world is possible.  The storm, the rain slowly rotting the harvest, children sickening in cellars are obvious; but equally obvious are an evening in June, the delight of men and women in one another, in music, and in the exercise of thought.  There can surely be no question that the sum of satisfaction is increasing, not merely in the gross but for each human being, as the earth from which we sprang is being worked out of the race, and a higher type is being developed.  I may observe, too, that although it is usually supposed, it is erroneously supposed, that it is pure doubt which disturbs or depresses us.  Simple suspense is in fact very rare, for there are few persons so constituted as to be able to remain in it.  It is dogmatism under the cloak of doubt which pulls us down.  It is the dogmatism of death, for example, which we have to avoid.  The open grave is dogmatic, and we say that man has gone, but this is as much a transgression of the limits of certitude as if we were to say he is an Angel in bliss.  The proper attitude, the attitude enjoined by the severest exercise of the reason is, I do not know; and in this there is an element of hope, now rising and now falling, but always sufficient to prevent that blank despair which we must feel if we consider it as settled that when we lie down under the grass there is an absolute end.

The provision in nature of infinity ever present to us is an immense help.  No man can look up to the stars at night and reflect upon what lies behind them without feeling that the tyranny of the senses is loosened, and the tyranny, too, of the conclusions of his logic.  The beyond and the beyond, let us turn it over as we may, let us consider it as a child considers it, or by the light of the newest philosophy, is a constant, visible warning not to make our minds the measure of the universe.  Underneath the stars what dreams, what conjectures arise, shadowy enough, it is true; but one thing we cannot help believing as irresistibly as if by geometrical deduction—­that the sphere of that understanding of ours, whose function it seems to be to imprison us, is limited.