He rose, and walked up and down for a time.  What would one not give for a faith like that?

“—­Is this so sweet that one were fain to follow? 
Is this so sure where all men’s hopes are hollow,
Even this your dream, that by much tribulation
Ye shall make whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks straight? 
—­Nay, though our life were blind, our death were fruitless,
Not therefore were the whole world’s high hope rootless;
But man to man, nation would turn to nation,
And the old life live, and the old great world be great.”

With such a faith—­with that “inexorable desire” burning in the heart and the brain—­surely one could find the answer easy enough to the last question of the poor creatures who wonder at the way-worn pilgrims,

“—­Pass on then, and pass by us and let us be,
For what light think ye after life to see? 
And if the world fare better will ye know? 
And if man triumph who shall seek you and say?”

That he could answer for himself, at any rate.  He was not one to put much store by the fair soft present; and if he were to enter upon any undertaking such as that he had had but a glimpse of, neither personal reward nor hope of any immediate success would be the lure.  He would be satisfied to know that his labor or his life had been well spent.  But whence was to come that belief? whence the torch to kindle the sacred fire?

The more he read, during these days of waiting, of the books and pamphlets he had brought with him, the less clear seemed the way before him.  He was struck with admiration when he read of those who had forfeited life or liberty in this or the other cause; and too often with despair when he came to analyze their aims.  Once or twice, indeed, he was so moved by the passionate eloquence of some socialist writer that he was ready to say, “Well, the poor devils have toiled long enough; give them their turn, let the revolution cost what it may!” And then immediately afterward:  “What!  Stir up the unhappy wretches to throw themselves on the bayonets of the standing armies of Europe?  There is no emancipation for them that way.”

But when he turned from the declamation and the impracticable designs of this impassioned literature to the vast scheme of co-operation that had been suggested rather than described to him, there seemed more hope.  If all these various forces that were at work could be directed into one channel, what might they not accomplish?  Weed out the visionary, the impracticable, the anarchical from their aims; and then what might not be done by this convergence of all these eager social movements?  Lind, he argued with himself, was not at all a man likely to devote himself to optimistic dreams.  Further than that—­and here he was answering a suspicion that again and again recurred to him—­what if, in such a great social movement, men were to be found who were only playing for their own hand?  That was the case in every such combination.  But false or self-seeking agents neither destroyed the nobleness of the work nor could defeat it in the end if it were worthy to live.  They might try to make for themselves what use they could of the current, but they too were swept onward to the sea.