Carlyle in "Heroes and Hero Worship" shows the folly of condemning a man for the faults noted down by the world about him—by those blind to the true inner secret of his life. "Who art thou that judgest thy fellow?"
Naturalism is illogical because it postulates Nature without mind.
If you do not place faith in humanity, what really is the use of any philosophy of life?
Let us remember St. Paul's injunction, "Bear ye one another's burdens."
It is a thought to make one ponder, that by far the finest Life of Christ was written by an agnostic, Renan.
Action is a great joy in life.
When prehistoric man took up a flint and laboriously beat it into a shape that his brain told him would be of use to him, he laid the foundations of all civilisation. Man's progress is the story of brute force laid low by Thought—which is the one really irresistible influence in the Universe:
"In the world there is nothing great but Man;
In Man there is nothing great but Mind."
It is a perplexing reflection that there is no absolute moral standard. The moral law appears to vary with environment and according to conditions of time and place. I am reminded of Pope's lines:
"Where the extreme of vice was ne'er agreed.
Ask where's the North? At York 'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where."