Still loved and sought the beautiful,
Loved truth for its own sake, and sought,
Regardless of aught else the while,
Like mine the light of cloudless day,
And in unsatisfying thought
By twilight glimmers led astray,
Like mine, at length, sank overwrought?”
There may be truth within our reach. Some of us deem we have found it in youth, and, passing out of the metaphysic stage of thought, use our philosophy as a scaffolding wherewith to build the solid edifice of life, gradually heeding less and less how that scaffolding may prove rotten or ill-jointed. But, even in such a case, the knowledge of all that has been, and is not, in the world of man’s highest thought is a sorrowful one. As we wander on from one system to another, we feel as if we were but numbering the gallant ships with keels intended to cut such deep waters, and topmasts made to bear flags so brave, which lie wrecked and broken into drift-wood along the shore of the enchanted Loadstone Isle.
What is, then, the conclusion of our long pleading? Knowledge is acquired at the cost of a certain measure of health, and eyesight, and youthful joy. Knowledge involves the deterioration of some faculties as well as the strengthening of others. Knowledge engenders sundry moral faults. In the realms of history, of physical and of mental science, the survey of things obtained through knowledge is full of sadness and solemnity. The telescope which has revealed to us a thousand galaxies of suns has failed to show us the Heaven which we once believed was close overhead.
Is then the pursuit of Knowledge, after all, truly a delusion, the worst and weariest of human mistakes, a thing to which we are driven by our necessities on one hand and lured by our thirst for it on the other, but which, nevertheless, like the martyrs’ cup of salt water, only burns our lips with its bitter brine?