THE IMMORTALITY OF THE GOOD. 407 



history ; if it. runs counter to our nature and our 

 history, its Influence is rapidly obliterated. And so 

 with events that had little intrinsic importance, i.e., 

 little spiritual significance, they are forgotten and 

 their effect is evanescent. For memory is not in- 

 discriminate : it selects what is significant and thus 

 preserves it : and yet again all the experience that 

 moulds the character, though it may be forgotten, 

 has not wholly perished, for it persists in the result- 

 ant habits. And what Is true of impressions is true 

 also of persons and of actions ; in social progress 

 also it is emphatically not true that "" the evil that 

 men do lives after them. " Like a polluted stream, 

 the course of history runs Itself clear of the errors 

 and crimes of the unconscious or unwilling human 

 instruments of the divine purpose : the blindness and 

 perversity of its champions cannot stop the progress 

 of a good cause. On the other hand, it is vain to 

 struggle against the spirit of the ages and the neces- 

 sities of evolution ; neither virtue nor genius can 

 prop a falling cause. Christianity triumphed in spite 

 of the murder of Hypatia.; but Demosthenes could 

 not save Athens, nor Hannibal Carthage, and Cato 

 could not recall the ghost of Roman freedom by the 

 blood of his self-sacrifice. Force may effect reactions 

 that run counter to the course of things, but they 

 soon pass away, and leave no trace behind. How 

 much remained of the constitution of Sulla, or of 

 the restored rule of the Bourbons, twenty years 

 after its institution? 



Thus all the elements of the lower phases of life 

 that are capable of development are transformed 

 into the higher, and the continuous thread of con- 

 sciousness is never broken. And this continuity 

 of the phases, of consciousness is really sufficient 



