But for our encouragement, let us contemplate the heroic characters which progress has developed. From these we may take hope and courage, in these we may find the best results of the moral evolution of our race, and the promise of the better future which man alone can work out by ever-renewed effort. The love of such characters, and even the knowledge that they exist, is the highest joy of human association, a joy which the present age may feel in a degree that no former age has known; and herein lies the greater beauty of the present time over all others. The thought of such characters can sustain us even in our own self-doubt. What man has done, man can do. Nay, he shall do more, much more.
The question as to the final destruction of the human race, whether by sudden catastrophe or slow decay, can little affect happiness, at present, or for very many ages to come. As yet, evolution is in the direction of a greater harmony that means continually greater pleasure to life. We have not reached our maximum, we are evolving upwards towards it. The pessimist is fond of making much of the final end of our planet; but the healthy and successful will be happy in spite of future ages, and the extent and degree of happiness will continue to increase for such an immense period of time that there is no reason for considering the destruction of our race as exerting any important influence on ethical theory. The loss of our faith in individual immortality is a far greater source of present pain. It leaves death a harder sorrow;—but it lends life new meaning. The good we strive for lies no longer in a world of dreams on the other side the grave; it is brought down to earth and waits to be realized by human hands, through human labor. We are called on to forsake the finer egoism that centred all its care on self-salvation, for a love of our own kind that shall triumph over death, and leave its impress on the joy of generations to come. There is something lost in the dissolution of the old faith to us who were reared in it. The hope of restitution, to the individual, from supernatural cause, here or hereafter, is forever done away with. There is no restitution. In our favorite novel, when the doors are closed and the lights extinguished, that some unspeakable sorrow may hide itself in darkness and silence, we can always turn back the leaves till we are again in the midst of light and music and dancing, and the heart for which the tragic knife is pitilessly sharpening in the hand of Destiny, is yet untouched. But in the book of Reality, there is no turning back; the pages are burned before our eyes as we read. Sooner or later, we all of us reach the point where that which made life most worth living has passed away from us forever. There is no help save the knowledge of the fact, that shall make us all draw closer in sympathy and by mutual kindness render loss less bitter. As we accept the Truth, and bow our head to the Inevitable, we may learn a less narrow happiness for this life and for the Hereafter, from the great pioneers of Scientific Doubt and pure Humanitarianism, one of whom has written:—
"Oh, may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues.
So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing as beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
*....*....*....*
This is life to come,
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,—
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense.
So shall I join the choir invisible,
Whose music is the gladness of the world."
FOOTNOTES:
[275] It should be said, in justice to the play in question, that the idea of purification by evil was evidently not present to its author.
[276] See Part I. p. 33, this book; "Social Statics," 87-89.
[277] "Le Luxe," p. 2.
[278] "Le Luxe," p. 12.