e entered the house where the storm has raged, as
well as the house of peace, have rarely departed without most clearly
detecting the essentially human reasons of both peace and storm. We
who have known the wise and upright man who has been guilty of error or
crime, are acquainted also with the circumstances which induced his
action, and these circumstances seem to us in no way supernatural. As
we draw near to the woman whose gesture brought misery to her, we learn
very soon that this gesture might have been avoided, and that, in her
place, we should have refrained. The friends of the man around whom
all fell into ruins, and of the neighbour who ever was able to build up
his life anew, will have observed before that the acorn sometimes will
fall on to rock, and sometimes on fertile soil. And though poverty,
sickness, and death still remain the three inequitable goddesses of
human existence, they no longer awake in us the superstitious fears of
bygone days We regard them to-day as essentially indifferent,
unconscious, blind. We know that they recognise none of the ideal laws
which we once believed that they sanctioned; and it only too often has
happened that at the very moment we were whispering to ourselves of
"purification, trial, reward, punishment," their undiscerning caprice
gave the lie to the too lofty, too moral title which we were about to
bestow.

20

Our imagination, it is true, is inclined to admit, perhaps to desire,
the intervention of the superhuman; but, for all that, there are few,
even among the most mystic, who are not convinced that our moral
misfortunes are, in their essence, determined by our mind and our
character; and, similarly, that our physical misfortunes are due in
part to the workings of certain forces which often are misunderstood,
and in part to the generally ill-defined relation of cause to effect:
nor is it unreasonable to hope that light may be thrown on these
problems as we penetrate further into the secrets of nature. We have
here a certitude upon which our whole life depends; a certitude which
is shaken only when we consider our own misfortunes, for then we shrink
from analysing or admitting the faults we ourselves have committed.
There is a hopefulness in man which renders him unwilling to grant that
the cause of his misfortune may be as transparent as that of the wave
which dies away in the sand or is hurled on the cliff, of the insect
whose little wings gleam for an ins