Those who understand life’s meaning, and know how to live and die thus, are to be counted not by twos, threes, tens, but by hundreds, thousands, millions.  They labor quietly, endure privations and pains, live and die, and throughout everything see the good without seeing the vanity.  I had to love these people.  The more I entered into their life, the more I loved them; and the more it became possible for me to live, too.  It came about not only that the life of our society, of the learned and of the rich, disgusted me—­more than that, it lost all semblance of meaning in my eyes.  All our actions, our deliberations, our sciences, our arts, all appeared to me with a new significance.  I understood that these things might be charming pastimes, but that one need seek in them no depth, whereas the life of the hard-working populace, of that multitude of human beings who really contribute to existence, appeared to me in its true light.  I understood that there veritably is life, that the meaning which life there receives is the truth; and I accepted it."[Q]

    [Q] My Confession, X. (condensed).

In a similar way does Stevenson appeal to our piety toward the elemental virtue of mankind.

“What a wonderful thing,” he writes,[R] “is this Man!  How surprising are his attributes!  Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow-lives,—­who should have blamed him, had he been of a piece with his destiny and a being merely barbarous? ... [Yet] it matters not where we look, under what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what depth of ignorance, burdened with what erroneous morality; in ships at sea, a man inured to hardship and vile pleasures, his brightest hope a fiddle in a tavern, and a bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him, and he, for all that, simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave to drown, for others;... in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent millions to mechanical employments, without hope of change in the future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet true to his virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his neighbors, tempted perhaps in vain by the bright gin-palace,... often repaying the world’s scorn with service, often standing firm upon a scruple;... everywhere some virtue cherished or affected, everywhere some decency of thought and courage, everywhere the ensign of man’s ineffectual goodness,—­ah! if I could show you this!  If I could show you these men and women all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging to some rag of honor, the poor jewel of their souls.”

    [R] Across the Plains:  “Pulvis et Umbra” (abridged).