' THE STORY OF MY HEART ' 201 



whole mode of thought of the nations must be altered 

 before physical progress is possible. Not while money, 

 furniture, affected show and the pageantry of wealth 

 are the ambitions of the multitude can the multitude 

 become ideal in form. When the ambition of the multi- 

 tude is fixed on the ideal of form and beauty, then that 

 ideal will become immediately possible, and a marked 

 advance towards it could be made in three generations. 

 Glad, indeed, should I be to discover something that 

 would help towards this end. 



' How pleasant it would be each day to think, To-day 

 I have done something that will tend to render future 

 generations more happy. The very thought would make 

 this hour sweeter. It is absolutely necessary that some- 

 thing of this kind should be discovered. First, we must 

 lay down the axiom that as yet nothing has been found ; 

 we have nothing to start with ; all has to be begun afresh. 

 All courses or methods of human life have hitherto been 

 failures. Some course of life is needed based on things 

 that are, irrespective of tradition. The physical ideal 

 must be kept steadily in view.'* 



It may be said that in this eloquence is the hectic flush 

 of the man doomed to an early death ; that here is the 

 weakling's morbid sympathy with strength. But its 

 movement, its parallel to Shelley's ' Be thou me, im- 

 petuous one !' place it beyond criticism far within the 

 realm of joy. 



' There is,' he says, * no design and no evolution.' The 

 sequence from cause to effect does not seem to him inevit- 

 able. There is no * must ' — which recalls the brook's 

 ' there is no why.' The balance of logic does not corre- 

 spond with life, with the irregular human frame, the 

 unbalanced tree ; and returning to his idea of the in- 

 humanity of Nature, he finds * no humanity ' in our 

 bones, neither square nor round, and causing ' a sense of 

 horror, so extra-human are they in shape.' Instead of 

 arguing thence that human thought of human origin is 



* The Story of My Heart. 



