True, if the problem is too difficult, if the solution lies beyond the faculties of those whom he wishes to test and put to the proof, the master will not fail to furnish them with all the elements necessary for their guidance, whether they consider it from without, or whether they consider it with the help of their own inner consciousness.
But science and conscience stand in need of an equally difficult task; the first, that it may learn to observe clearly, the latter that it may learn to act purely. And it is here, above all, that the two-fold nature of man becomes a perplexity and a stumbling-block. On the one hand, man creates theories, in order to disembarrass himself of the science which calls for the exercise of powerful and laborious observation; on the other, he creates dogmas, which he hopes may lull to sleep that ever active, ever restless conscience, which demands fertile and beneficial actions, and rejects barren or deceitful phrases.
It is true that to many minds the discussion of the questions at which we have hinted seems a sorry work, because the time given for their discussion is necessarily so limited. What is life? they say. What can be effected in so short an interval? What can man hope to accomplish in the few short years that intervene between manhood, when the mind is mature, and old age, when the intellect grows enfeebled? These are the men who echo the old poet's mournful cry:—[91]
"A good that never satisfies the mind,
A beauty fading like the April flowers,
A sweet with floods of gall that runs combined,
A pleasure passing ere in thought made ours,
An honour that more fickle is than wind,
A glory at opinion's frown that lowers,
A treasury which bankrupt Time devours,