ction
that the really commanding secrets of existence will forever elude
discovery. Literature, rendered uncreative by the scientific influence,
has fallen to refining upon itself, and photographing a narrow
conception of facts. The exhausting heats of Equatorial Africa, and the
paralyzing cold of the Poles, forbid the hope of successful colonization
of those regions. Social life is an elaborate apeing of behavior which
has no root in the real impulses of the human heart; its true underlying
spirit is made up of hatred, covetousness, and self-indulgence. There
are no illusions left to us, no high, inspiring sentiment. We have
reached our limit, and the best thing to be hoped for now is some vast
cataclysmal event, which, by destroying us out-of-hand, may save us the
slow misery of extinction by disease, despair, and the enmity of every
man against every other. What Columbus can help us out of such a
predicament?

Such is the refrain of the nineteenth century pessimist. But, as before,
the sprouting of new thought and belief is visible to the attentive eye
all over the surface of the sordid field of a decaying civilization. The
time has come when the spirit of Columbus' symbol shall avouch itself,
vindicating the patient purpose of Him who brings the flower from the
seed. Great discoveries come when they are needed; never too early nor
too late. When nothing else will serve the turn, then, and not till
then, the rock opens, and the spring gushes forth. Who that has
considered the philosophy of the infinitely great and of the infinitely
minute can doubt the inexhaustibleness of nature? And what is nature but
the characteristic echo, in sense, of the spirit of man?

Even on the material plane, there are numberless opportunities for the
new Columbus. Ever and anon a canard appears in a newspaper, or a
romance is published, reporting or describing some imaginary invention
which is to revolutionize the economical situation. The problem of
air-navigation is among the more familiar of these suggestions, though
by no means the most important of them. No doubt we shall fly before
long, but that mode of travel will be, after all, nothing more than an
improvement upon existing means of intercommunication. After the
principle has been generally adopted, and the novelty has worn off, we
shall find ourselves not much better, nor much worse off than we were
before. Flying will be but another illustration of the truth that
competition