Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore

Which is more strange, that an inexplicable and unfathomable thing should occur once and for all, or that it should occur a million times every day all the world over? Let those, however, who are too proud to wonder, do as seems good to them. Their want of wonder will not help them toward the required explanation: and to them, as to us, as soon as we begin asking, “How?” and “Why?” the mighty Mother will only reply with that magnificent smile of hers, most genial, but most silent, which she has worn since the foundation of all worlds; that silent smile which has tempted many a man to suspect her of irony, even of deceit and hatred of the human race; the silent smile which Solomon felt, and answered in “Ecclesiastes;” which Goethe felt, and did not answer in his “Faust;” which Pascal felt, and tried to answer in his “Thoughts,” and fled from into self-torture and superstition, terrified beyond his powers of endurance, as he found out the true meaning of St. John’s vision, and felt himself really standing on that fragile and slippery “sea of glass,” and close beneath him the bottomless abyss of doubt, and the nether fires of moral retribution.