out _hope_,
uncompelled labor is an impossibility; and hope implies an object. Nor
would the veriest idler, who passes a whole day in whittling a stick,
if he could be brought to look into himself, deny it. So far from
having no object, he would and must acknowledge that he was in
fact hoping to relieve himself of an oppressive portion of time by
whittling away its minutes and hours. Here we have an extreme instance
of that which constitutes the real business of life, from the most
idle to the most industrious; namely, to attain to a _satisfying
state_.

But no one will assert that such a state was ever a consequence of the
attainment of any object, however exalted. And why? Because the motive
of action is left behind, and we have nothing before us.

Something to desire, something to look forward to, we _must_
have, or we perish,--even of suicidal rest. If we find it not here in
the world about us, it must be sought for in another; to which, as we
conceive, that secret ruler of the soul, the inscrutable, ever-present
spirit of Harmony, for ever points. Nor is it essential that the
thought of harmony should even cross the mind; for a want may be
felt without any distinct consciousness of the form of that which is
desired. And, for the most part, it is only in this negative way that
its influence is acknowledged. But this is sufficient to account
for the universal longing, whether definite or indefinite, and the
consequent universal disappointment.

We have said that man cannot to himself become the object of
Harmony,--that is, find its proper correlative in himself; and we have
seen that, in his present state, the position is true. How is it,
then, in the world of spirit? Who can answer? And yet, perhaps,--if
without irreverence we might hazard the conjecture,--as a finite
creature, having no centre in himself on which to revolve, may it not
be that his true correlative will there be revealed (if, indeed, it be
not before) to the disembodied man, in the Being that made him? And
may it not also follow, that the Principle we speak of will cease to
be potential, and flow out, as it were, and harmonize with the
eternal form of Hope,--even that Hope whose living end is in the
unapproachable Infinite?

Let us suppose this form of hope to be taken away from an immortal
being who has no self-satisfying power within him, what would be
his condition? A conscious, interminable vacuum, were such a thing
possible, would but fai