122 At the Darkest Hour, 



die with great hopes and will never learn their mistake ; 

 whereas the man of science dies with the certainty that 

 his course is run. Science, alas, has added a pang to 

 death for all her children. It has dissipated the beautiful 

 mirage of dying men. 



" Let the grand future pity those whose weakness 

 Had to be fostered by a foolish hope; 

 PerhapB without it man had died, the EarJii 

 Gone fallow to its~dead-aEb, lunar age." 



Without it, perhaps, men could not have been led or 

 driven to work and fight. Temple and pyramid would 

 not have been reared, nor needful experience in architec- 

 ture been gained. Greek and Trojan would not have 

 sailed the Mediterranean, nor the Hebrew slave fled from 

 bondage to seek his Promised Land. 



As soon as man rose a little above his brutal ancestry, 

 as soon as he began to think, to ponder what he saw, he 

 was aghast at death. He would not face the hard fact . 

 and persuaded himself that by prayer, burnt offerings, 

 pilgrimages and self-denial, he might escape extinction. 

 The mirage of his hope rose and loomed before his life- 

 thirsty eyes. Erelong, then, as might be predicted, cer- 

 tain guilds took up the business of exploiting the mirage. 

 That the guild itself was often sincere and benevolent 

 does not materially alter the facts of its origin or its 

 tendencies. For guaranteeing the mirage to be genuine 

 Celestial landscape, priest and Levite have been the 



