“But with the warfare you have peace, and you have no fear of--_It_”--Bulstrode shuddered, and pointed toward the library door, which was slightly ajar--“nor even of death, which has turned Skelton to _It_ in one moment of time.” “I certainly have no fear,” answered Conyers, after a pause. “I doubt, I am at war, I suffer agonies of mind, but not once have I ever feared death. I fear life much more.” Bulstrode said nothing for a moment, then disappeared, his shuffling step sounding with awful distinctness through the silent house. He came back after a little while. The fumes of brandy were strong upon him, and in his hand he carried two or three volumes. “Here,” said he, laying the books down carefully, “here is what I read when all the mysterious fears of human nature beset and appal me--Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. They are the only two philosophers who agree, after all. Old Aristotle went to work and built the most beautiful and perfect bridge, that ever entered into the mind of man to conceive, a part of the way across the river that separates the known from the unknown. He got a solid foundation for every stone of that bridge; every step is safe; nothing can wash it away. But he reached a point where he could not see any farther. Mists obscured it all. If any man that ever lived could have carried this bridge all the way over in its beauty and perfection, Aristotle was that man; but having carried it farther than it had ever been carried before, he said: ‘Here reason stops. Man can do no more. The Great First Principle must now reveal the rest.’ Observe: All the others claim to have done a complete work. Kant built a great raft that floated about and kept men from drowning, but it is not a plain pathway on a bridge; it cannot connect the two shores; nobody can get from the known to the unknown on it. Hegel built two or three beautiful arches and called it complete, but it stopped far short of Aristotle’s, and led nowhere. Then there were dozens of other fellows, wading around in the shallows and paddling aimlessly about the river, and all crying out: ‘Here is the way; this is the ferry to cross. There is no way but mine, and my way is the only perfect way. There is no more to know except what I can tell you.’ But Aristotle, who is the embodied Mind, said there was more to come; he saw beyond him the wavering line of the other shore; but where he stood was all mist and darkness. He knew--ah, the wise old Greek!--knew his work stopped short, and he knew it could be carried to the end. He was so great, therefore, that no imperfections could escape him; and he did not mistake his splendid fragment for the whole. And he knew a part so splendid must be a part of the whole. He saw, as it were, the open door, but he could not enter; he had heard the overture played, but he could not remain to see the curtain rise. But fourteen hundred years after Aristotle had done all that mortal man could do