[11] I have heard of two very great living philosophers who thought they had pretty nearly got rid of Final Causes, but who, in talking together, found it hard to avoid assuming their existence. One of them, in fact, in detailing his own observations and discoveries concerning animals and plants, used so often terms implying that there was a purpose visible in natural arrangements that his friend stopped him, and said, “Mr. ——, you are getting strangely teleological!”
[12] Or at least our right from wrong; for, on Mr. Darwin’s showing, there may, it seems, be a different right and wrong for creatures differently constituted in other worlds, whose interests, being different, will cause different “sets” of their brains toward the lines of action useful to their tribes accordingly.
[13] The following letter appeared in the Spectator:—
Sir,—Indulging in the pernicious habit of reading in bed, I last night perused with profound interest Mr. Greg’s letter in your current number, your own remarks thereupon, and also Mr. Greg’s generous defence of his old friend, Harriet Martineau, in the Nineteenth Century. As my eyes closed on the last paragraph of this article, I seemed to behold a vision, which I shall take leave to describe to you.
Dives had just eaten a particularly plentiful dinner, and was standing at the door of a pretty cottage in Ambleside. Lazarus, looking up at him, said pitifully, “I perish with hunger.” Thereupon, Dives observed, with great serenity: “Lazarus, I have had an excellent dinner. There is not a crumb left. But I am quite content, and you ought to be the same.”
Poor Lazarus, however, instead of seeming satisfied, wailed yet more sadly: “But I hunger, Dives! I hunger for the bread of life! I hunger for human love, of which I had only begun to taste, when it was snatched away. I hunger for justice, of which such scant measure has been dealt me, and to millions like me. I hunger for truth, I hunger for beauty, I hunger for righteousness, I hunger for a love holy, divine, and perfect, which alone can satisfy my soul. I hunger, Dives! I hunger, and you tell me there is not a crumb left of the rich feast of existence, and bid me be content. It is a cruel mockery.”
Then Dives answered yet more placidly: “I never dream of wishing anything were otherwise than it is. I am frankly satisfied to have done with life. I have had a noble share of it, and I desire no more. I utterly disbelieve in a future life.”
At that moment, my respected friend Mr. Greg passed by, and heard what Dives was saying; on which, to my great surprise, he made the following observation: “This is, unquestionably, the harder—may it not also be the higher?—form of pious resignation, the last achievement of the ripened mind.”
As for Lazarus, on catching Mr. Greg’s remark, he turned himself painfully on the ground, and groaned: “I never heard before of anybody being ‘piously resigned’ to the woes and wants of other people. La Rochefoucauld was right, I suppose, to say, ‘Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d’autrui’; but, for my part, I should not precisely call Dives’ satisfaction in his ‘noble share’ of the feast, while I am doomed to perish starving, by quite so fine a name as ‘pious resignation.’ Pray, Mr. Greg, with your large humanity, take my case into consideration, before you credit Dives with anything better than stupendous egotism.”
Startled by the vehemence of poor Lazarus, I awoke.