ABSTRACT
From age to age mankind have importunately sought for the reasons of sorrow; and from age to age have returned from the quest unsatisfied; for still is the question constantly renewed. If men knew everything, they would venerate nothing: reverence is not the affection with which objects of knowledge, as such, are regarded; and to place any object of thought under the eye of religious contemplation, it must be stationed above the region of distinct perception, in the shadows of that Infinitude which sleeps so awfully around the luminous boundaries of people's knowledge. Possessed by no idea of a prescriptive title to be happy, their blessings are not benumbed by anticipation, but come to them fresh and brilliant as the first day’s morning and evening light to the dwellers in Paradise. Rarely from the weary and overburdened treated themselves most gently by that legislation of the universe which they criticize with a melancholy so profound.
