while his courage and his humour are defences of which he cannot be
disarmed, whatever be the intention of the Eternal, it is by no means
certain that nature does not mean kindly by man. Perhaps the pain of the
world is but the rough horseplay of great powers that mean but jest--and
kill us in it: as though one played at 'tick' with an elephant!

Perhaps, after all,--who knows?--God is love, and His great purpose
kind.

Surely, when you think of it, the existence in man of the senses of love
and pity implies the probability of their existence elsewhere in the
universe too.

'Into that breast which brings the rose
Shall I with shuddering fall.'

So runs the profoundest thought in modern poetry--and need I say it is
Mr. Meredith's?

As the fragrance and colour of the rose must in some occult way be
properties of the rude earth from which they are drawn by the sun, may
not human love also be a kindly property of matter--that mysterious
life-stuff in which is packed such marvellous potentialities? Evidently
love must be somewhere in the universe--else it had not got into the
heart of man; and perhaps pity slides down like an angel in the rays of
the solar energy, while there is the potential beating of a human heart
even in the hard crust of the carbon compounds.

I confess that this seems to me no mere fancy, but a really comforting
speculation. Pain, we say, is inherent in the scheme of the universe;
but is not love seen to be no less inherent, too?

There must be some soul of beauty to animate the lovely face of the
world, some soul of goodness to account for its saints. If the gods are
cruel, it is strange that man should be so kind, and that some pathetic
spirit of tenderness should seem to stir even in the bosoms of beasts
and birds.

Meanwhile, we cannot too often insist that, whatever uncertainties there
be, man has one certainty--himself. Science has really adduced nothing
essential against his significance. That he is not as big as an Alp, as
heavy as a star, or as long-lived as an eagle, is nothing against his
proper importance. Even a nobleman is of more significance in the world
than his acres, and giants are not proverbial for their intellectual or
spiritual qualities. The ant is of more importance than the ass, and the
great eye of a beautiful woman is more significant than the whole clayey
bulk of Mars.

After all the scientific mockery of the old religious ideal of the
importance of man, on