By this retired fountain the spirits enter into a discussion concerning the condition and prospects of their protégé man. Two of them are evidently croakers. To them the world seems, as to any moral progress, stationary, if not actually retrograding. They are almost indignant that the Lord does not consign the planet with its inhabitants at once to perdition. But the third spirit, a superior intelligence,
One, chief among the spirits three,
Grander than either, more sedate,
Wore yet a look of hope elate,
With higher knowledge, larger trust
In the long future; and the rust
Of week-day toil with earthly things
Stained and yet glorified his wings.
This superior angel maintains that man, though not capable of instantaneous acts or intuitive perceptions, equal to those of the higher orders of beings, is yet not the mere hopeless castaway the two other spirits would make him. Give him but time, and with pain and toil he will work out results worthy even of an angel’s regard. An angel, by direct intuition, may see at once in a shapeless lump of matter all the forms of beauty of which it is capable. Yet man, in process of time, slowly but surely, can bring forth those same wonderful forms. The illustration of this point in the celestial argument leads to the main story.
I, in thought,