It is a great problem why Nature sets so many young people in
the world who are apparently unfitted for the battle of life, and
certainly have no power to excel in any direction. The subjective
religion which Caius had been taught had nourished within him great
store of noble sentiment and high desire, but it had deprived him of
that rounded knowledge of actual life which alone, it would appear,
teaches how to guide these forces into the more useful channels. Then as
to capacity, he had the fine sensibilities of a poet, the facile
introspection of the philosophical cast of mind, without the mental
power to write good verse or to be a philosopher. He had, at least in
youth, the conscience of a saint without the courage and endurance which
appear necessary to heroism. In mockery the quality of ambition was
bestowed upon him but not the requisites for success. Nature has been
working for millions of years to produce just such characters as Caius
Simpson, and, character being rather too costly a production to throw
away, no doubt she has a precise use for every one of them.
It is not the province of art to solve problems, but to depict them. It
is enough for the purpose of telling his story that a man has been
endowed with capacity to suffer and rejoice.
CHAPTER II.
THE SAD-EYED CHILD.
One evening in early summer Caius went a-fishing.
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