convinced there is no God,
and to recover by the mere force of animal life from the prostration
into which the conviction cast me, I should, I hope, try to do what duty
was left me, for I too should be filled, for a time at least, with an
endless pity for my fellows; but all would be so dreary, that I should
be almost paralyzed for serving them, and should long for death to do
them and myself the only good service. The thought of the generations
doomed to be born into a sunless present, would almost make me join any
conspiracy to put a stop to the race. I should agree with Hamlet that
the whole thing had better come to an end. Would it necessarily indicate
a lower nature, or condition, or habit of thought, that, having
cherished such hopes, I should, when I lost them, be more troubled than
one who never had had them?"

"Still," said Faber, "I ask you to allow that a nature which can do
without help is greater than a nature which can not."

"If the thing done were the same, I should allow it," answered the
curate; "but the things done will prove altogether different. And
another thing to be noted is, that, while the need of help might
indicate a lower nature, the capacity for receiving it must indicate a
higher. The mere fact of being able to live and act in more meager
spiritual circumstances, in itself proves nothing: it is not the highest
nature that has the fewest needs. The highest nature is the one that has
the most necessities, but the fewest of its own making. He is not the
greatest man who is the most independent, but he who thirsts most after
a conscious harmony with every element and portion of the mighty whole;
demands from every region thereof its influences to perfect his
individuality; regards that individuality as his kingdom, his treasure,
not to hold but to give; sees in his Self the one thing he can devote,
the one precious means of freedom by its sacrifice, and that in no
contempt or scorn, but in love to God and his children, the multitudes
of his kind. By dying ever thus, ever thus losing his soul, he lives
like God, and God knows him, and he knows God. This is too good to be
grasped, but not too good to be true. The highest is that which needs
the highest, the largest that which needs the most; the finest and
strongest that which to live must breath essential life, self-willed
life, God Himself. It follows that it is not the largest or the
strongest nature that will feel a loss the least. An ant w