every effort has its proper place as a stage in the endless process. The
soul bears in it _all_ its conquests.

"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, _so_ much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round."[B]

[Footnote B: _Abt Vogler_.]

The "apparent failure" of knowledge, like every apparent failure, is "a
triumph's evidence for the fulness of the days." The doubts that
knowledge brings, instead of implying a defective intelligence doomed to
spend itself on phantom phenomena, sting to progress towards the truth.
He bids us "Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe."

"Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark."[A]

[Footnote A: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_.]

Similarly, defects in art, like defects in character, contain the
promise of further achievement.

"Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?
In both, of such lower types are we
Precisely because of our wider nature;
For time, their's--ours, for eternity.