He sinks beneath the ruin he has wrought.[76]

What is the verdict of the vastest mind?

Silence: the book of fate is closed to us.

Man is a stranger to his own research;

He knows not whence he comes, nor whither goes.

Tormented atoms in a bed of mud,

Devoured by death, a mockery of fate.

But thinking atoms, whose far-seeing eyes,

Guided by thought, have measured the faint stars,

Our being mingles with the infinite;