This is gone; that never truly was; and you yourself are altered beyond recognition.

Times and men and circumstances change about your changing character, with a speed of which no earthly hurricane affords an image.

What was the best yesterday, is it still the best in this changed theatre of a to-morrow?
Will your own Past truly guide you in your own violent and unexpected Future?
And if this be questionable, with what humble, with what hopeless eyes, should we not watch other men driving beside us on their unknown careers, seeing with unlike eyes, impelled by different gales, doing and suffering in another sphere of things?
And as the authentic clue to such a labyrinth and change of scene, do you offer me these two score words?
these five bald prohibitions?
For the moral precepts are no more than five; the first four deal rather with matters of observance than of conduct; the tenth, _Thou shalt not covet_, stands upon another basis, and shall be spoken of ere long.

The Jews, to whom they were first given, in the course of years began to find these precepts insufficient; and made an addition of no less than six hundred and fifty others! They hoped to make a pocket-book of reference on morals, which should stand to life in some such relation, say, as Hoyle stands in to the scientific game of whist.

The comparison is just, and condemns the design; for those who play by rule will never be more than tolerable players; and you and I would like to play our game in life to the noblest and the most divine advantage.