humanity ever dreamt of. Formerly thinkers used to move furiously about like captured beasts, intently watching the bars of their cages, at leaping up against thein in order to break them: happy he who fancied that he could spy through a gap something of the outside, of the world to come and of the far away.
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A tragic outcome of knowledge.—Among the means of exaltation, human sacrifices at all times have most effectually raised an elevated man. Perhaps the one mighty thought the "thought of a self-sacrificing humanity"—might still be made to prevail over every other effort, so as to carry the victory over the most victorious. But to whom should the sacrifice be offered?We might already now swear that, if ever the constellation of such a thought were to rise above the horizon, the knowledge of truth will be left as the sole mighty purpose with which such a sacrifice—because no sacrifie is too great for it—would be commensurate. Menwhile the problem, to what extent humanity, as a whole.could devise steps for the promotion of knuowledge has never been proposed, much less what craving of knowledge could urge hunanity so as to offer itself and to die with the light of an anticipating wisdom in the eye.Perhaps, when once an alliance for the purposes of knowledge will have been effected with the inhabitants of other stars, when, for some thousands of years, an
