PESSIMISM AND ITS ANTIDOTE. 689 



For indeed we prize life not by the sum of our possessions, but 

 only by the rate and steadiness of pur growth. " Not the possession," 

 says Lessing, " or fancied possession of the truth, but the endeavor 

 after it, determines a man's value. If God held in his right hand the 

 sum total of truth, and in his left the ever-inextinguishable desire 

 after truth, though linked with the condition of everlastingly wander- 

 ing in error, and called to me, ' Choose,^ I should humbly close with 

 the left and answer: ' Father, give me this ; the truth pure and simple 

 is for thee alone.' " 



But if we will have cleared to ourselves at the highest court what 

 it is that imparts to error, crime, and tragedy, their powerful attrac- 

 tion, so that they are indispensable to high poetry and music and art, 

 we shall find it is only because they constitute a dark background to 

 heighten the play of the lightnings, to glorify the splendor of the 

 sun. The trial and sorrow and humiliation serve to bring out in dis- 

 tincter outline the faith and serenity and triumph which, as in St. 

 Paul, are more than a match for all the powers of darkness. Our 

 conviction of the dominance and necessity of moral law is so deeply 

 grounded, that the storm and earthquake threatening its upheaval only 

 summon into livelier consciousness our inexpugnable confidence. Let 

 the heavens fall. Though the earth be removed, God is our refuge. 



It is the conscious or unconscious conviction of every sound man 

 that truth is better and more beautiful than any delusion that 

 a man's well-being is the measure of his conformity to truth. Does 

 a man find his hitherto solid philosophy impugned, his most holy 

 religion out of joint with new emerging facts, he will not shut his ears 

 to the severe reason. Does Science come and knock from under his 

 feet the ground of immortality on which he had rested, it may help 

 only to startle him out of his egoism startle him on to some firmer 

 footing. He must feel the immortality in the present, and not post- 

 pone it to the future. Only he who has eternal life in him(= intellect- 

 ual recognition of, and hearty identification wath, eternal law) is eter- 

 nal. If Darwinism is true, and a man's spiritual supremacy is also 

 true, the two facts will square with each other. For mind and Nature 

 are the type and impression, in perfect correspondence to each other. 

 The harshest exception is, when properly understood, no exception 

 but a confirmation of the beautiful law. Depth and wholeness of 

 vision will always be song and piety, be Dante and Shakespeare, never 

 skepticism and mockery. The reconciliation of the spirit with Fate 

 and Nature is a grace which rests sweetly and unconsciously in the 

 heart of simple goodness, but is also the crowning grace of the bold- 

 est intellect which has pierced deep enough. Plato, Shakespeare, 

 Milton, Newton, Kant, Goethe, and Schiller, are reverent worshipers, 

 and walk in the sanctuary above arm-in-arm with Christ and the 

 apostles. We see, in the " Nathan der Weise," how the brave Lessing 

 received before death in fullest measure the gift of reconciliation. 

 VOL. XI. 44 



