Sec. 4. And I believe that the resentment of this interference of the mist
is one of the forms of proud error which are too easily mistaken for
virtues. To be content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed
unmanly, and therefore we think that to love light and seek knowledge
must always be right. Yet (as in all matters before observed,) wherever
_pride_ has any share in the work, even knowledge and light may be ill
pursued. Knowledge is good, and light is good, yet man perished in
seeking knowledge, and moths perished in seeking light; and if we, who
are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mystery as is needful
for us, we shall perish in like manner. But, accepted in humbleness, it
instantly becomes an element of pleasure; and I think that every rightly
constituted mind ought to rejoice, not so much in knowing anything
clearly, as in feeling that there is infinitely more which it cannot
know. None but proud or weak men would mourn over this, for we may
always know more if we choose, by working on; but the pleasure is, I
think, to humble people, in knowing that the journey is endless, the
treasure inexhaustible,--watching the cloud still march before them with
its summitless pillar, and being sure that, to the end of time and to
the length of eternity, the mysteries of its infinity will still open
farther and farther, their dimness being the sign and necessary adjunct
of their inexhaustibleness. I know there are an evil mystery and a
deathful dimness,--the mystery of the great Babylon--the dimness of the
sealed eye and soul; but do not let us confuse these with the glorious
mystery of the things which the angels "desire to look into," or with
the dimness which, even before the clear eye and open soul, still rests
on sealed pages of the eternal volume.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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