Wisdom and Destiny | Page 9

any day, from the depths of the planet Mars, the
infallible formula of happiness, conveyed in the final truth as to the aim
and the government of the universe. Such a formula could only bring
change or advancement unto our spiritual life in the degree of the desire
and expectation of advancement in which we might long have been
living. The formula would be the same for all men, yet would each one
benefit only in the proportion of the eagerness, purity, unselfishness,
knowledge, that he had stored up in his soul. All morality, all study of
justice and happiness, should truly be no more than preparation,
provision on the vastest scale--a way of gaining experience, a
stepping-stone laid down for what is to follow. Surely, desirable day of
all days were the one when at last we should live in absolute truth, in
immovable logical certitude; but in the meantime it is given us to live
in a truth more important still, the truth of our soul and our character;
and some wise men have proved that this life can be lived in the midst
of gravest material errors.
3. Is it idle to speak of justice, happiness, morals, and all things
connected therewith, before the hour of science has sounded-- that
definitive hour, wherein all that we cling to may crumble? The
darkness that hangs over our life will then, it may be, pass away; and
much that we do in the darkness shall be otherwise done in the light.
But nevertheless do the essential events of our moral and physical life

come to pass in the darkness as completely, as inevitably, as they
would in the light, Our life must be lived while we wait for the word
that shall solve the enigma, and the happier, the nobler our life, the
more vigorous shall it become; and we shall have the more courage,
clear-sightedness, boldness, to seek and desire the truth. And happen
what may, the time can be never ill- spent that we give to acquiring
some knowledge of self. Whatever our relation may become to this
world in which we have being, in our soul there will yet be more
feelings, more passions, more secrets unchanged and unchanging, than
there are stars that connect with the earth, or mysteries fathomed by
science. In the bosom of truth undeniable, truth all absorbing, man shall
doubtless soar upwards; but still, as he rises, still shall his soul
unerringly guide him; and the grander the truth of the universe, the
more solace and peace it may bring, the more shall the problems of
justice, morality, happiness, love, present to the eyes of all men the
semblance they ever have worn in the eyes of the thinker. We should
live as though we were always on the eve of the great revelation; and
we should be ready with welcome, with warmest and keenest and
fullest, most heartfelt and intimate welcome. And whatever the form it
shall take on the day that it comes to us, the best way of all to prepare
for its fitting reception is to crave for it now, to desire it as lofty, as
perfect, as vast, as ennobling as the soul can conceive. It must needs be
more beautiful, glorious, and ample than the best of our hopes; for,
where it differ therefrom or even frustrate them, it must of necessity
bring something nobler, loftier, nearer to the nature of man, for it will
bring us the truth. To man, though all that he value go under, the
intimate truth of the universe must be wholly, preeminently admirable.
And though, on the day it unveils, our meekest desires turn to ashes and
float on the wind, still shall there linger within us all we have prepared;
and the admirable will enter our soul, the volume of its waters being as
the depth of the channel that our expectation has fashioned.
4. Is it necessary that we should conceive ourselves to be superior to
the universe? Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a
feeble ray that has issued from Nature; a tiny atom of that whole which
Nature alone shall judge. Is it fitting that the ray of light should desire
to alter the lamp whence it springs?
That loftiness within us, from whose summit we venture to pass

judgment on the totality of life, to absolve or condemn it, is doubtless
the merest pin-prick, visible to our eye alone, on the illimitable sphere
of life. It is wise to think and to act as though all that happened to man
were all that man most required. It is not long ago--to cite only one of
the problems that the instinct of our planet is invited to solve--that a
scheme was on