fully wrought, or monuments of goodness to live after you, if only
in the memory of some tiny hamlet of the folded hills. This is the law
of life that Diotima knew, by which flower and tree, animal and man,
fulfil the end of their creation; and man in nothing more surely proves
his lordship than by his many-handed hold upon posterity. For the lower
creation is procreant in one way, but man in many; who may have
offspring not of body alone but of mind and heart, and be so redeemed
from the grim dismay of childlessness. The greatest human happiness is
to be fertile in every way, a thing granted rarely in the world we know;
the next, perhaps, is that of the parent who gives all of himself to his
family, not tilling any field beyond the charmed walls confining his
desire. The author sure of his fame, the born artist, the benefactor of
his kind, are also happy, seeing their offspring grow in years and in
the power of making a brighter world.

But he is miserable who, aspiring to follow these, feels his force wane
within him while he remains yet fatherless; or who has sons stillborn,
or weakly, or dishonoured. I question whether sheer degradation into
evil brings more pain to man than such sense of sterility or frustrate
parentage. But it is no small part of human redemption that none need
know the interminable misery. A man may have neither sons nor genius,
but in the dark hour he can go out and give, if it be only a penny or a
kind word, and on that foundation build a temple to receive his
thanksgiving. To give of yourself is good. This is that grand agreement
and oecumenical consent to which those words _quod ab omnibus quod
ubique_ in deed and truth may be applied. For this reason meanness is of
the deeps, and avarice groans in the lowest zone of hell. And if there
are faces of blank and permanent despair upon your path, be sure that
these are not masks of whole men, but of those who wilfully abstained
from joy and have received the greater damnation. My children are mostly
writings, poor weakly creatures dying inarticulate and unchristened,
tenderly remembered by myself only, but at least no nuisance to the
world. I loved them at their birth, I hold them in remembrance, though
they were ever of a hectic and uncertain beauty.

The comparison of children with branches of the olive is not the mere
ornament of a Bible verse, but the wisdom of one who knew both tree and
child. For as children are bright creatures of swiftly c