“Do you know,” he said, “I have found, of late, that many of my old fixed ideas have been insidiously modifying. So many things that I used to regard as preposterous have been borne in upon me, in a singular fashion, as by no means so out of the question. I have had one or two strange experiences and now a hope—I might say a faith—has settled upon me of an undying element in our personality. I feel that we shall meet again those we have loved here—some time or another.”
“What a sting that would take from the agony of parting,” cried Hadria.
“And, after all, is it less rational to suppose that there is some survival of the Self, and that the wild, confused earthly experience is an element of a spiritual evolutionary process, than to suppose that the whole universe is chaotic and meaningless? For what we call mind exists, and it must be contained in the sum-total of existence, or how could it arise out of it? Therefore, some reasonable scheme appears more likely than a reasonless one. And then there is that other big fact that stares us in the face and puts one’s fears to shame: human goodness.”
Hadria’s rebellious memory recalled the fact of human cruelty and wickedness to set against the goodness, but she was silent.
“What earthly business has such a thing as goodness or pity to appear in a fortuitous, mindless, soulless universe? Where does it come from? What is its origin? Whence sprang the laws that gave it birth?”
“It gives more argument to faith than any thing I know,” she said, “even if there had been but one good man or woman since the world began.”
“Ah, yes; the pity and tenderness that lie in the heart of man, even of the worst, if only they can be appealed to before they die, may teach us to hope all things.”
There was a long silence. Through the open window, they could hear the soft cooing of the wood-pigeons. Among the big trees behind the house, there was a populous rookery, noisy now with the squeaky voices of the young birds, and the deeper cawing of the parent rooks.
“I have been for many years without one gleam of hope,” said the Professor slowly. “It is only lately that some of my obstinate preconceptions have begun to yield to other suggestions and other thoughts, which have opened up a thousand possibilities and a thousand hopes. And I have not been false to my reason in this change; I have but followed it more fearlessly and more faithfully.”
“I have sometimes thought,” said Hadria, “that when we seem to cling most desperately to our reason, we are really refusing to accept its guidance into unfamiliar regions. We confuse the familiar with the reasonable.”