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362
THE DAWN OF DAY

for enjoyment of all Weary and aged people, wish to enjoy the results of their thinking, instead of again testing and sowing them ; which necessitates their making them suitable and enjoyable, and removing their dryness, coldness, aud want of favour; and thus it happens that the old thinker apparently raises himself above his life's work, but in truth spoils it by means of infused reveries and sweetness, flavour, poetic imists, and mystic lights, So fared Plato in the end; so that great, honest Frenchman, Auguste Comte, who as an embracer and conqueror of the pure sciences has no rival either among the Germans or the English of this century. A third symptom of weariness is this: that ambition which stormed in the heart of the great thinker when he was young, and which at that time was satisfied with nought, has also grown old, and like one why has no time to lose snatches at the coarser and readier means of gratification, which are those of active, predominant. peremptory, conquering dispositions: from this time forth he wishes to found institutions which bear his name, and no mere brain-structures. What are to him those ethereal victories and honours in the realm of proofs and refutations ; or a perpetuation of his name in books; or a thrill of exultation in the soul of a reader? The institution, on the other hand, is a temple, as he well knows— indeed, a temple of stone and duration will keep its god alive more surely than the sacrificial offerings of tender and rare souls. Perhaps, at this period, he