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Nor should they be regarded as useless, even though the immense torrent of material forces absorb them, as it absorbs the dew that falls from the pale morning flower. Boundless as the world may be wherein we live, it is yet as hermetically enclosed as a sphere of steel. Nothing can fall outside it, for it has no outside; nor can any atom possibly be lost. Even though our species should perish entirely, the stage through which it has caused certain fragments of matter to pass would remain, notwithstanding all ulterior transformations, an indelible principle and an immortal cause. The formidable, provisional vegetations of the primary epoch, the chaotic and immature monsters of the secondary grounds—Plesiosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, Pterodactyl—these might also regard themselves as vain and ephemeral attempts, ridiculous experiments of a still puerile nature, and conceive that they would leave no mark upon a more harmonious globe. And yet not an effort of theirs has been lost in space. They purified the air, they softened the unbreathable flame of oxygen, they paved the way for the more symmetrical life of those who should follow. If our lungs find in the atmosphere the aliment they need, it is thanks to the inconceivably incoherent forests of arborescent fern. We owe our brains and nerves of to-day to fearful hordes of swimming or flying reptiles. These obeyed the order of their life. They did what they had to do. They modified matter in the fashion prescribed to them. And we, by carrying particles of this same matter to the degree of extraordinary incandescence proper to the thought of man, shall surely establish in the future something that never shall perish.
IV
THE PAST
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Our past stretches behind us in long perspective. It slumbers on the horizon like a deserted city shrouded in mist. A few peaks mark its boundary, and soar predominant into the air; a few important acts stand out, like towers, some with the light still upon them, others half ruined and slowly decaying beneath the weight of oblivion. The trees are bare, the walls crumble, and shadow slowly steals over all. Everything seems to be dead there, and rigid, save only when memory, slowly decomposing, lights it for an instant with an illusory gleam. But apart from this animation, derived only from our expiring recollections, all would appear to be definitively motionless, immutable for ever, divided from present and future by a river that shall not again be crossed.
In reality it is alive; and, for many of us, endowed with a profounder, more ardent life than either present or future. In reality this dead city is often the hot-bed of our existence; and, in accordance with the spirit in which men return to it, shall some find all their wealth there, and others lose what they have.
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Our conception of the past has much in common with our conception of love and happiness, destiny, justice, and most of the vague but therefore not less potent spiritual organisms that stand for the mighty forces we obey. Our ideas have been handed down to us ready-made by our predecessors; and even when our second consciousness wakes, and, proud in its conviction that henceforth nothing shall be accepted blindly, proceeds most carefully to investigate these ideas, it will squander its time questioning those that loudly protest their right to be heard, and pay no heed to the others close by, that as yet, perhaps, have said nothing. Nor have we, as a rule, far to go to discover these others. They are in us and of us; they wait for us to address them. They are not idle, notwithstanding their silence. Amid the noise and babble of the crowd they are tranquilly directing a portion of our real life; and, as they are nearer to truth than their self-satisfied sisters, they will often be far more simple, and far more beautiful too.
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