The same idea is at the base of what is most stimulating in Bergson, the idea of what he calls Creative Evolution, an undefined splendour not yet fully existing, but, as it were, crying out to be born, and only to be born through the struggle of man’s spirit with matter.  This is one function of matter, perhaps the supreme function, to be the material through which alone man’s vague ideal can become definite and actual, just as an artist can only get close to his own conception through the effort to embody it in visible form or audible sound.

From this point of view, the world is conceived as anything but ready-made, rather it is in the process of making, and we ourselves are among the makers.  Or, to take a metaphor that perhaps appeals more to the modern world, it is a fight, and an unfinished fight.  To quote William James, ’It feels like a real fight—­as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem; and first of all to redeem our own hearts from atheisms and fears.’  He goes on to confess that he himself does not know, and certainly cannot prove scientifically, that the redemption will surely be accomplished.  Such proof, he admits, ’may not be clear before the day of judgement (or some stage of being which that expression may serve to symbolize)’.  ’But the faithful fighters of this hour, or the beings that then and there will represent them, may turn to the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with words like those with which Henry IV greeted the tardy Crillon after a great battle had been gained: 

      “Hang yourself, brave Crillon!  We fought at Arques,
    and you were not there!"’[75]

Thus, if the idea of the splendour and perfection of the universe has sunk into the background, if the sense of worship and the feeling of ecstasy have been dimmed (and I think they have), at least the reverence for heroism and for tenderness has not been impaired, and there after all lies the root of human majesty.  There is deep pathos in the change, but maybe, paradoxical as it sounds, deep hope as well.  The world may grow the stronger for having to live now by what Carlyle called ‘desperate hope’ as distinct from ‘hoping hope’.  The triumphant harmony that seemed attained a century ago by certain poets and thinkers may have been, after all, too cheap and easy, if not for their own large spirits, at least for us, their lesser readers.  Mystics have spoken of ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’ as the stage inevitable before the crowning glory, and to-day some of those who call to us out of great darkness are among our greatest leaders.