the song of the sirens becomes fatal as never yet it has been in time. We think ourselves privileged, first among men, to know the secrets of Heaven, and fulfil the economy of earth; and the result is, that of all the races that yet have been put to shame by their false wisdom or false art,--which have given their labour for that which is not bread, and their strength for that which satisfieth not,--we have most madly abandoned the charity which is for itself sufficing, and for others serviceable, and have become of all creatures the most insufficient to ourselves, and the most malignant to our neighbours. Granted a given degree of knowledge--granted the 'καὶ πλεἰονα εἰδώς' in science, in art, and in literature,--and the present relations of feeling between France and Germany, between England and America, are the most horrible at once in their stupidity and malignity, that have ever taken place on the globe we inhabit, even though all its great histories, are of sin, and all its great songs, of death. 80. Gentlemen, I pray you very solemnly to put that idea of knowing all things in Heaven and Earth out of your hearts and heads. It is very little that we can ever know, either of the ways of Providence, or the laws of existence. But that little is enough, and exactly enough: to strive for more than that little is evil for us; and be assured that beyond the need of our narrow being,--beyond the range of the kingdom over which it is ordained for each of us to rule in serene αὐτάρκεια and self-possession, he that increaseth toil, increaseth folly; and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.