Neither is the study of your
fellow-men. Neither is religion itself. We were not sent into the
world to be happy, but to be right; at least, poor creatures that we
are, as right as we can be; and we must be content with being right,
and not happy. For I fear, or rather I hope, that most of us are
not capable of carrying out Talleyrand's recipe for perfect
happiness on earth--namely, a hard heart and a good digestion.
Therefore, as our hearts are, happily, not always hard, and our
digestions, unhappily, not always good, we will be content to be
made wise by physical science, even though we be not made happy.
And we shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too,
not only with what we can understand, but, content with what we do
not understand--the habit of mind which theologians call--and
rightly--faith in God; the true and solid faith, which comes often
out of sadness, and out of doubt, such as bio-geology may well stir
in us at first sight. For our first feeling will be--I know mine
was when I began to look into these matters--one somewhat of dread
and of horror.
Here were all these creatures, animal and vegetable, competing
against each other. And their competition was so earnest and
complete, that it did not mean--as it does among honest shopkeepers
in a civilised country--I will make a little more money than you;
but--I will crush you, enslave you, exterminate you, eat you up.
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