ainty of a foreign language even in a day contemporary with
the original writer, and therefore over and above what arises from lapse
of time and gradual alterations.

_On Human Progress._--Oftentimes it strikes us all that this is so
insensible as to elude observation the very nicest. Five years add
nothing, we fancy. Now invert your glass. In 1642 Englishmen are
fighting for great abstract principles. In 1460-83 (_i.e._, 100 + 17 +
42 years before, or 159 years) they are fighting for persons, for rival
candidates. In 1460 they could not have conceived more than an Esquimaux
can entertain a question about the constitution of lyric poetry, or the
differential principles of English and Greek tragedy, the barest
approximation to questions that in 1642 are grounds of furious quarrel,
of bloody quarrel, of extermination. Now then, looking forward, you
would see from year to year little if any growth; but inverting your
glass, looking back from the station of 1642 to 1460, you see a progress
that if subdivided amongst all the 159 years would give to each _x_/0 as
its quota, _i.e._ infinity. In fact, it is like the progression from
nothing to something. It is--creation.

All the body of the Christian world would fly out in a rage if you
should say that Christianity required of you many things that were easy,
but one thing that was _not_. Yet this is undoubtedly true; it requires
you to _believe_, and even in the case where you know what it is to
believe, and so far are free from perplexity, you have it not in your
own power to ensure (though you can influence greatly) your own power to
believe. But also great doubt for many (and for all that are not
somewhat metaphysical) attends the knowledge of what is believing.

As to my mother's fancy that Sir W. Jones had found in the East proofs
of Christianity, having gone out an infidel.

To do her justice, never once after she had adopted a theory of
Christianity did she inquire or feel anxious about its proof. But to
review the folly of this idea.

1. That Christianity there where it reigned and was meant to reign
should be insufficient in its proofs; but that in a far distant land,
lurking in some hole or corner, there should be proofs of its truth,
just precisely where these proofs were not wanted. And again, that these
should be reserved for one scholar rambling into a solitary path, where
in a moral sense _nobody_ could follow him (for it _is_ nobody--this or
that orien