so pure, that when they are before us we cannot imagine
they could be better if they proceeded from an omnipotently
merciful Being and no pestilence had ever been known.
We must not worry ourselves with attempts at reconciliation.
We must be satisfied with a hint here and there,
with a ray of sunshine at our feet, and we must do
what we can to make the best of what we possess.
Hints and sunshine will not be wanting, and science,
which was once considered to be the enemy of religion,
is dissolving by its later discoveries the old gross
materialism, the source of so much despair.
The conduct of life is more important than speculation,
but the lives of most of us are regulated by no principle
whatever. We read our Bible, Thomas a Kempis,
and Bunyan, and we are persuaded that our salvation
lies in the perpetual struggle of the higher against
the lower self, the spirit against the flesh, and
that the success of the flesh is damnation.
We take down Horace and Rabelais and we admit that
the body also has its claims. We have no power
to dominate both sets of books, and consequently they
supersede one another alternately. Perhaps life
is too large for any code we can as yet frame, and
the dissolution of all codes, the fluid, unstable
condition of which we complain, may be a necessary
antecedent of new and more lasting combinations.
One thing is certain, that there is not a single
code now in existence which is not false; that the
graduation of the vices and virtues is wrong, and that
in the future it will be altered. We must not
hand ourselves over to a despotism with no Divine
right, even if there be a risk of anarchy. In
the determination of our own action, and in our criticism
of other people, we must use the whole of ourselves
and not mere fragments. If we do this we need
not fear. We may suppose we are in danger because
the stone tables of the Decalogue have gone to dust,
but it is more dangerous to attempt to control men
by fictions. Better no chart whatever than one
which shows no actually existing perils, but warns
us against Scylla, Charybdis, and the Cyclops.
If we are perfectly honest with ourselves we shall
not find it difficult to settle whether we ought to
do this or that particular thing, and we may be content.
The new legislation will come naturally at the appointed
time, and it is not impossible to live while it is
on the way.
In these latter days of anarchy and tumult, when there
is no gospel of faith or morals, when democracy seems
bent on falsifying every prediction of earlier democratic
enthusiasts by developing worse dangers to liberty
than any which our forefathers had to encounter, and
when the misery of cities is so great, it appears
absurd, not to say wrong, that we should sit still
and read books. I am ashamed when I go into my
own little room and open Milton or Shakespeare after
looking at a newspaper or walking through the streets
of London. I feel that Milton and Shakespeare
are luxuries, and that I really belong to the class
which builds palaces for its pleasure, although men
and women may be starving on the roads.
