ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



i One of our younger poets, John Russell Mc- 

 Carthy, has had the courage to say: 



"that we must look for life 

 Hereafter, not by one and one, — your soul 

 Alone among the souls of other men, 

 Drifting and staying, a thing apart forever — 

 But we must see when all at last is counted 

 And the great sum is made, how one by one 

 We have returned to Her, the Mother of All, — 

 The bit of soul-stuff that She loaned us. 



For we must live at last a part of Her — 

 For we shall be forever as one with Her." 



The reverent old people to whom I just referred 

 paid the debt long ago, and the day of reckoning for 

 some of us cannot be far off. After the account is 

 closed who or what has profited by the transaction? 

 We are prone to put such questions to Nature, but 

 they are irrelevant. The universe is not run for 

 profit, as we use the term. So far as we can see, it is 

 run just to satisfy the aesthetic and creative feeling 

 of the Eternal. When the sidereal systems in space 

 run down, they are wound up again, and suns and 

 planets are started anew. The great game never 

 comes to an end; in fact, it is unthinkable that it 

 should ever have begun, except as the flowers begin 

 in spring, or as a man begins when he is born. Ante- 

 cedents ! Antecedents ! — always. We cannot apply 

 our standards of loss and gain to the dealings of 

 the Eternal with us. "That I have positively ap- 

 peared," says Whitman, "that is enough." 



284 



