We seem unwilling to recognise the blindness of the external forces, such as air, fire, water, the laws of gravity and others, with which we must deal and do battle.  The need is heavy upon us to find excuses for fate; and even when blaming her, we seem to be endeavouring still to explain the causes of her past and her future action, conscious the while of a feeling of pained surprise, as though a man we valued highly had done some dreadful deed.  We love to idealise destiny, and are wont to credit her with a sense of justice loftier far than our own; and however great the injustice whereof she may have been guilty, our confidence will soon flow back to her, the first feeling of dismay over; for in our heart we plead that she must have reasons we cannot fathom, that there must be laws we cannot divine.  The gloom of the world would crush us were we to dissociate morality from fate.  To doubt the existence of this high, protecting justice and virtue, would seem to us to be denying the existence of all justice and of all virtue.

We are no longer able to accept the narrow morality of positive religion, which entices with reward and threatens with punishment; and yet we are apt to forget that, were fate possessed of the most rudimentary sense of justice, our conception of a lofty, disinterested morality would fade into thin air.  What merit in being just ourselves if we be not convinced of the absolute injustice of fate?  We no longer believe in the ideals once held by saints, and we are confident that a wise God will hold of as little account the duty done through hope of recompense, as the evil done for sake of gain; and this even though the recompense hoped for be nothing but the self-ensuing peace of mind.  We say that God, who must be at least as high as the highest thoughts He has implanted in the best of men, will withhold His smile from those who have desired but to please Him; and that they only who have done good for the sake of good and as though He existed not, they only who have loved virtue more than they loved God Himself, shall be allowed to stand by His side.  And yet, and for all this, no sooner does the event confront us, than we discover that we still are guided by the “moral maxims” of our childhood.  Of more avail would be a “List of chastised virtues.”  The soul that is quick with life would find its profit therein; the cause of virtue would gain in vigour and in majesty.  Let us not forget that it is from the very nonmorality of destiny that a nobler morality must spring into life; for here, as everywhere, man is never so strong with his own native strength as when he realises that he stands entirely alone.  As we consider the crowning injustice of fate, it is the negation of high moral law that disturbs us; but from this negation there at once arises a moral law that is higher still.  He who no longer believes in reward or punishment must do good for the sake of good.  Even though a moral law seem on the eve of disappearing, we need