l68 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



moments, they are haunted by a background of unendurable vice and 

 misery. While none can quite escape this background, the noblest 

 spirits suffer most ; and only some such word as despair can voice the 

 mood of all those cultivated men and women who believe in a temple 

 for Beauty, yet cannot worship with free hearts while their ears are 

 saddened by the cry of those who sin or suffer. But in the days that 

 shall be, when the whole level of life has been raised, they shall worship 

 in gladness. Their hearts shall be stirred to unknown depths, and 

 thrilled with undreamed pleasures, because of the goodly communion 

 of fellow spirits. It is almost as true in art as in mystical religions 

 that our fullest and most expansive joy is attained only in an atmos- 

 phere of sympathy and kinship ; and in the new day the congregation 

 will be almost as wide as mankind itself. Moreover, it may be 

 confidently hoped that Art will serve one great moral end by elevating 

 and purifying the emotions; and will fulfil an important function of 

 religion by meeting our demand for a symbolism of the unknown and 

 inexpressible. It may teach us to deal with dreams and aspirations, 

 all the glorious domain of the heart's desire, without confusing the 

 will to believe with objective reality. 



V 



Then at last we shall believe in Life. And believing in Life we 

 shall confidently base our ethics on the beauty and dignity of human 

 nature, even as Kant did; but the words shall be rich with an unsus- 

 pected depth and range of meaning. So, too, we shall interpret afresh 

 Plato's health of the soul, and teach that the unpardonable sin is the 

 sin against Life. 



What may have happened in other worlds we know not; but on 

 our own tiny planet mankind is Life's crowning manifestation. Slime 

 and ooze in the primal ocean; nshlike creatures, learning painfully 

 to breathe the air; sad-eyed chattering things, swinging through 

 darksome jungles; beast-fearing half -men, hiding in hillside caverns 

 — all these and a thousand intermediate things we were. But in this 

 all-hazarding embodiment of the vital impulse was something different 

 from the rest of nature. Step by painful step, up the endless, pitiless 



