"Everything," he declares, "in my experience--and I speak only of my own--testifies to the incompleteness of life, nay, even to its preponderating unhappiness. The strong body is found allied to a stunted soul. The soaring soul is chained by bodily weakness to the ground. Help turns to hindrance, or discloses itself too late in what we have taken for such. Every sweet brings its bitter, every light its shade; love is cut short by death:"--
"I must say--or choke in silence--'Howsoever came my fate, Sorrow did and joy did nowise,--life well-weighed,--preponderate.' By necessity ordained thus? I shall bear as best I can; By a cause all-good, all-wise, all-potent? No, as I am man! Such were God: and was it goodness that the good within my range Or had evil in admixture or grew evil's self by change? Wisdom--that becoming wise meant making slow and sure advance From a knowledge proved in error to acknowledged ignorance? Power? 'tis just the main assumption reason most revolts at! power Unavailing for bestowment on its creature of an hour, Man, of so much proper action rightly aimed and reaching aim, So much passion,--no defect there, no excess, but still the same,-- As what constitutes existence, pure perfection bright as brief For yon worm, man's fellow-creature, on yon happier world--its leaf! No, as I am man, I mourn the poverty I must impute: Goodness, wisdom, power, all bounded, each a human attribute!" (vol. xiv. p. 183.)
"If we regard this life as final, we must relinquish our conception of the power of God: for His work is then open to human judgment, in the light of which it yields only imperfect results."
"But let us once assume that our present state is one of probation, intended by God as such: and every difficulty is solved. Evil is no longer a mark of failure in the execution of the Divine Scheme: it becomes essential to it; my experience indeed represents it as such. I cannot conceive evil as abolished without abrogation of the laws of life. For it is not only bound up with all the good of life; it is often its vehicle. Gain is enhanced by recent loss. Ignorance places us nearest to knowledge. Beauty is most precious, truth most potent, where ugliness and falsehood prevail; and what but the loss of Love teaches us what its true value has been?"