all others. If, often, it only perplexes: much more the rest. They
leave much unexpounded; and disclosing new mysteries, add to the
enigma. Fellow-men; the ocean we would sound is unfathomable; and
however much we add to our line, when it is out, we feel not the
bottom. Let us be truly lowly, then; not lifted up with a Pharisaic
humility. We crawl not like worms; nor wear we the liveries of angels.

"'The firmament-arch has no key-stone; least of all, is man its prop.
He stands alone. We are every thing to ourselves, but how little to
others. What are others to us? Assure life everlasting to this
generation, and their immediate forefathers--and what tears would
flow, were there no resurrection for the countless generations
from the first man to five cycles since? And soon we ourselves shall
have fallen in with the rank and file of our sires. At a blow,
annihilate some distant tribe, now alive and jocund--and what would we
reck? Curiosity apart, do we really care whether the people in
Bellatrix are immortal or no?

"'Though they smite us, let us not turn away from these things, if
they be really thus.

"'There was a time, when near Cassiopeia, a star of the first
magnitude, most lustrous in the North, grew lurid as a fire, then dim
as ashes, and went out. Now, its place is a blank. A vast world, with
all its continents, say the astronomers, blazing over the heads of our
fathers; while in Mardi were merry-makings, and maidens given in
marriage. Who now thinks of that burning sphere? How few are aware
that ever it was?

"'These things are so.