This feeling will so completely
predominate over every other that they will not even consider it
necessary to give it words; but on either side it will be silently
assumed, and form the ground-work of all they have to talk about.
He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits
some time in the conjurer's booth at a fair, and witnesses the
performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to
be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to
deceive, their effect is gone.
While no man is much to be envied for his lot, there are countless
numbers whose fate is to be deplored.
Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say _defunctus est_;
it means that the man has done his task.
If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason
alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather
have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the
burden of existence? or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose
that burden upon it in cold blood.
I shall be told, I suppose, that my philosophy is comfortless--because
I speak the truth; and people prefer to be assured that everything the
Lord has made is good.
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