ed. Let
them carry in their minds this divine paradox, that it is far more
important to every man that he should do his utmost for Humanity than it
ever can be for Humanity that any one man should do his utmost for
_it_."

Illuminated by thoughts like these, the hero and the heroine are once
more drawn together; and when at night the guests go back to Baveno, and
the hero is left in his island villa alone, he betakes himself to a
boat, and awaits the approach of the morning. "At last," says the story,
"he put the boat about, with thoughts of returning home, and there, far
off, beyond the spikes of the mountains, he saw that the sky was pale
with the first colors of dawn. There, too, was the star of morning,
shining bright with a trembling steadfastness, and he knew that for him
a star had risen also. On his spirit descended the hush of the solemn
hour, which makes all the earth seem like some holy sanctuary, and there
came back to him two lines of Goethe's:

"The woman-soul leadeth us
Upward and on.

"Meanwhile on the sliding and glassy waters, that moved to left and
right at the touch of his dipping oars, there began to flicker a gleam
of faint saffron and rose color, and the breeze of the daybreak laid its
first touch on his cheek and gently stirred a straying lock of his hair.
The lights of Baveno, though still bright, looked belated, and the
mounting saffron was clear in the dome over him. Thoughts thronged on
his mind of many careers to which his life, with hers, might be
dedicated. Visions also, though he knew them too bright to last, floated
before him and made his being tingle--visions of great works done among
the toiling masses, of comfort and health invading the fastness of
degradation, and the fire of faith shining on eyeballs that had long
been blind to it."

I am not alluding here to _The Old Order Changes_ with a view to
discussing its merits or demerits as a novel. I am citing it merely as a
record of how my own social philosophy step by step developed itself,
the problems of economics and politics being step by step united with
those of psychology, of religion, of ambition, and the higher romance of
the affections. I am dealing with what took place in my own mind as an
example of analogous things which have probably taken place in the minds
of most men who, however they may differ otherwise from myself, have
been preoccupied in the same way. Thus the emotional optimism with which
this no