That was the question asked in Columbus' day; and he found an answer to it. Are we to expect the appearance of a new Columbus to answer it again? To unimaginative minds it looks as if there were no career for a new Columbus. In the first place, population is increasing so fast that soon even the steppes of Russia and the western American plains will be overcrowded. Again, land, and the control of industries, are falling into the possession of a comparative handful of persons, to whom the rest of the population must inevitably become subject; or, should the latter rebel, the ensuing period of chaos would be followed, at best, by a return of the old conditions. Religion is a lifeless letter, a school of good-breeding, a philosophical amusement; the old unreasoning faith that moved mountains can never revive. Science advances with ever more and yet more caution, but each new step only confirms the conviction that the really commanding secrets of existence will forever elude discovery. Literature, rendered uncreative by the scientific influence, has fallen to refining upon itself, and photographing a narrow conception of facts. The exhausting heats of Equatorial Africa, and the paralyzing cold of the Poles, forbid the hope of successful colonization of those regions. Social life is an elaborate apeing of behavior which has no root in the real impulses of the human heart; its true underlying spirit is made up of hatred, covetousness, and self-indulgence. There are no illusions left to us, no high, inspiring sentiment. We have reached our limit, and the best thing to be hoped for now is some vast cataclysmal event, which, by destroying us out-of-hand, may save us the slow misery of extinction by disease, despair, and the enmity of every man against every other. What Columbus can help us out of such a predicament? Such is the refrain of the nineteenth century pessimist. But, as before, the sprouting of new thought and belief is visible to the attentive eye all over the surface of the sordid field of a decaying civilization. The time has come when the spirit of Columbus' symbol shall avouch itself, vindicating the patient purpose of Him who brings the flower from the seed. Great discoveries come when they are needed; never too early nor too late. When nothing else will serve the turn, then, and not till then, the rock opens, and the spring gushes forth. Who that has considered the philosophy of the infinitely great and of the infinitely minute can doubt the inexhaustibleness of nature? And what is nature but the characteristic echo, in sense, of the spirit of man?