The Philosophy of Despair | Page 8

the nerve
of effectiveness. In proportion as one really believes this, he becomes a
cumberer of the ground. It was said of Oscar McCulloch, an earnest
student of human life, that "in whatever part of God's universe he finds
himself, he will be a hopeful man, looking forward and not backward,
looking upward and not downward, always ready to lend a helping
hand, and not afraid to die."
Of like spirit was Robert Louis Stevenson:
"Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will."
It is through men of this type that the work of civilization has been
accomplished, "men of present valor, stalwart, brave iconoclasts." They
were men who were content with the order of the universe as it is, and
seek only to place their own actions in harmony with this order. They
have no complaints to urge against "the goodness and severity of God,"
nor any futile wish "to remould it nearer to the heart's desire." The
"Fanaticism for Veracity" is satisfied with what is. Not the ultimate
truth which is God's alone, but the highest attainable truth, is the aim of
Science, and to translate Science into Virtue is the goal of civilization.
The third question which Science may ask is the direct one. In what
part of the universe are you, and what are you doing? Thoreau says that

"there is no hope for you unless this bit of sod under your feet is the
sweetest to you in this world - in any world." Why not? Nowhere is the
sky so blue, the grass so green, the sunshine so bright, the shade so
welcome, as right here, now, today. No other blue sky, nor bright
sunshine, nor welcome shade exists for you. Other skies are bright to
other men. They have been bright in the past and so will they be again,
but yours are here and now. Today is your day and mine, the only day
we have, the day in which we play our part. What our part may signify
in the great whole we may not understand, but we are here to play it,
and now is the time. This we know, it is a part of action, not of whining.
It is a part of love, not cynicism. It is for us to express love in terms of
human helpfulness. This we know, for we have learned from sad
experience that any other course of life leads toward decay and waste.
What, then, are you doing under these blue skies? The thing you do
should be for you the most important thing in the world. If you could
do something better than you are doing now, everything considered,
why are you not doing it?
If every one did the very best he knew, most of the problems of human
life would be already settled. If each one did the best he knew, he
would be on the highway to greater knowledge, and therefore still
better action. The redemption of the world is waiting only for each man
to "lend a hand."
It does not matter if the greatest thing for you to do be not in itself great.
The best preparation for greatness comes in doing faithfully the little
things that lie nearest. The nearest is the greatest in most human lives.
Even washing one's own face may be the greatest present duty. The
ascetics of the past, who scorned cleanliness in the search for godliness,
became, sometimes, neither clean nor holy. For want of a clean face
they lost their souls.
It was Agassiz's strength that he knew the value of today. Never were
such bright skies as arched above him; nowhere else were such
charming associates, such budding students, such secrets of nature fresh
to his hand. His was the buoyant strength of the man who can look the

stars in the face because he does his part in the Universe as well as they
do theirs. It is the fresh, unspoiled confidence of the natural man, who
finds the world a world of action and joy, and time all too short for the
fulness of life which it demands. When Agassiz died, "the best friend
that ever student had," the students of Harvard "laid a wreath of laurel
on his bier, and their manly voices sang a requiem, for he had been a
student all his life long, and when he died he was younger than any of
them."
Optimism in life is a good working hypothesis, if by optimism we
mean the open-eyed faith that force exerted is never lost. Much that
calls itself faith is only the blindness of self-satisfaction.
What if there are so many of us in the ranks of humanity? What if the
individual be lost in the