In the comedies and tragedies of life our immutable human nature reacts very much as in the dawn of science, and yet, with a widening of knowledge, the lights and shadows of the landscape have shifted, and the picture is brighter. Nothing can bring back the hour when sin and disease were correlated as confidently as night and day; and how shall we assess the enormous gain of a new criterion, a new estimate of the value of man's life! There are tones in human sentiment to-day which the ancients never heard, which our fathers indeed heard but faintly, and that without recognizing their significance. The human heart by which we live has been touched as with the wand of a Prospero. What availed the sceptred race! what the glory that was Greece, or the grandeur that was Rome! of what avail even has been the message of the gospel, while the people at large were haunted by fear and anxiety, stricken by the pestilence of the darkness and the sickness of the noon-day? The new socialism of Science with its definite mission cares not a rap for the theories of Karl Marx, of Ferdinand Lassalle, or of Henry George; still less for the dreams of Plato or of Sir Thomas More—or at least only so far as they help to realize the well-being of the citizen. Nor is there need to fear that in weighing the world in our balance we may drain the sap of its life, so long as we materialize in the service of man those eternal principles on which life rests—moral fervour, liberty and justice.
The outlook for the world as represented by Mary and John, and Jennie and Tom has never been so hopeful. There is no place for despondency or despair. As for the dour dyspeptics in mind and morals who sit idly croaking like ravens,—let them come into the arena, let them wrestle for their flesh and blood against the principalities and powers represented by bad air and worse houses, by drink and disease, by needless pain, and by the loss annually to the state of thousands of valuable lives—let them fight for the day when a man's life shall be more precious than gold. Now, alas! the cheapness of life is every day's tragedy!
If in the memorable phrase of the Greek philosopher Prodicus, "That which benefits human life is God," we may see in this new gospel a link betwixt us and the crowning race of those who eye to eye shall look on knowledge, and in whose hand Nature shall be an open book, an approach to the glorious day of which Shelley sings so gloriously:
Happiness
And Science dawn though late upon the earth;
Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;
Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,
Reason and passion cease to combat there,
Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extends
Its all-subduing energies, and wields
The sceptre of a vast dominion there.
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.,
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.