The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: things which subsist without growth, decay, or change, the only real,
only truly existing things, in short, are certain things which are not
seen; inappreciable by sense, or understanding, or imagination,
perceived only by the conscience and the reason. And that, again, the
problem of philosophy, the highest good for man, that for the sake of
which death were a gain, without which life is worthless, a drudgery, a
degradation, a failure, and a ruin, is to discover what those unseen
eternal things are, to know them, possess them, be in harmony with them,
and thereby alone to rise to any real and solid power, or safety, or
nobleness. It is a strange dream. But you will see that it is one
which does not bear much upon "points of controversy," any more than on
|