We live continually in a reverie of the future. We have no faith in human perfectibility. We think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. We cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass.
We have been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of temporal things, to give any continuous effort to anything — to be consistent in anything. Our life has been whim — impulse — passion — a longing for solitude — a scorn of all things present, in an earnest desire for the future.