Milton had no mind for mathematics, nor Newton for poetry. So the wisest philosophers like Herbert Spencer may go to religion and find nothing there but the abstruce and unknowable. Spencer's mind dwells on the phenomena of matter and material senses only. It is said nearly every great thinker has some central thought fixed firmly in his mind. The central thought of Plato is the theory of ideas—the assertion of the apparitional character of the seemingly real world. The central thought of Pascal is that of human intelligence confronting the universe and strangled by its inexorable tragedies. The central thought of Schopenhauer is the absurdity of life, and the central thought of Herbert Spencer is the evolution of the material universe.
PART SECOND
Sleep, death and oblivion are things that mock;
Sleep in dreams; death and oblivion in the grave;
And yet we are not mocked. We only walk
Amid realities that bind us like a slave.
Sleep soothes and cheers; death grimly reaps and slays.
It makes earth but a tomb—its house of revelry;