strength of his intellectual vision and insight: his world becomes
profounder; new stars, new enigmas, and notions are ever coming into
view. Perhaps everything on which the intellectual eye has exercised
its acuteness and profundity has just been an occasion for its exercise,
something of a game, something for children and childish minds. Perhaps
the most solemn conceptions that have caused the most fighting and
suffering, the conceptions "God" and "sin," will one day seem to us of
no more importance than a child's plaything or a child's pain seems to
an old man;--and perhaps another plaything and another pain will then
be necessary once more for "the old man"--always childish enough, an
eternal child!