tracted,
and transiently inspired, but has not steadiness for the initiatory
contemplation of the Actual. He conjoins its snatched privileges with a
besetting sensualism, and suffers at once from the horror of the one and
the disgust of the other, involving the innocent in the fatal conflict
of his spirit. When on the point of perishing, he is rescued by
Idealism, and, unable to rise to that species of existence, is grateful
to be replunged into the region of the Familiar, and takes up his rest
henceforth in Custom. (Mirror of Young Manhood.)

....

ARGUMENT.

Human Existence subject to, and exempt from, ordinary conditions
(Sickness, Poverty, Ignorance, Death).

SCIENCE is ever striving to carry the most gifted beyond ordinary
conditions,--the result being as many victims as efforts, and the
striver being finally left a solitary,--for his object is unsuitable to
the natures he has to deal with.

The pursuit of the Ideal involves so much emotion as to render the
Idealist vulnerable by human passion, however long and well guarded,
still vulnerable,--liable, at last, to a union with Instinct. Passion
obscures both Insight and Forecast. All effort to elevate Instinct to
Idealism is abortive, the laws of their being not coinciding (in the
early stage of the existence of the one). Instinct is either alarmed,
and takes refuge in Superstition or Custom, or is left helpless to human
charity, or given over to providential care.

Idealism, stripped of in sight and forecast, loses its serenity, becomes
subject once more to the horror from which it had escaped, and by
accepting its aids, forfeits the higher help of Faith; aspiration,
however, remaining still possible, and, thereby, slow restoration; and
also, SOMETHING BETTER.

Summoned by aspiration, Faith extorts from Fear itself the saving truth
to which Science continues blind, and which Idealism itself hails as its
crowning acquisition,--the inestimable PROOF wrought out by all labours
and all conflicts.

Pending the elaboration of this proof,

CONVENTIONALISM plods on, safe and complacent;

SELFISH PASSION perishes, grovelling and hopeless;

INSTINCT sleeps, in order to a loftier waking; and

IDEALISM learns, as its ultimate lesson, that self-sacrifice is true
redemption; that the region beyond the grave is the fitting one for
exemption from mortal conditions; and that Death is the everlasting
portal, indicated by the finger of God,--the broad avenue through