for ever the same. Has not--to take but one instance--has
not the phenomenon of the existence, everywhere among us, of a kind of
supreme and wholly spiritual justice, unarmed, unadorned, unequipped,
moving slowly but never swerving, stable and changeless in a world
where injustice would seem to reign--has this phenomenon not cause and
effect as deep, as exhaustless--is it not as astounding, as
admirable--as the wisdom of an eternal and omnipresent Judge? Should
this Judge be held more convincing for that He is less conceivable?
Are fewer sources of beauty, or occasions for genius to exercise
insight and power, to be found in what can be explained than in what
is, _a priori_, inexplicable? Does not, for instance, a victorious but
unjust war (such as those of the Romans, of England to-day, the
conquests of Spain in America, and so many others) in the end always
demoralise the victor and thrust upon him errors, habits, and faults
whereby he is made to pay dearly for his triumph; and is not the
minute, the relentless labour of this psychological justice as
absorbing, as vast, as the intervention of a superhuman justice? And
may not the same be said of the justice that lives in each one of us,
that causes the space left for peace, inner happiness, love, to expand
or contract in our mind and our heart in the degree of our striving
towards that which is just or is unjust?

26

And to turn to one mystery more, the most awful of all, that of
death--would any one pretend that our perception of justice, of
goodness and beauty, or our intellectual, sentient power, our eagerness
for all that draws near to the infinite, all-powerful, eternal, has
dwindled since death ceased to be held the immense and exclusive
anguish of life? Does not each new generation find the burden lighter
to bear as the forms of death grow less violent and its posthumous
terrors fade? It is the illness that goes before, the physical pain,
of which we are to-day most afraid. But death is no longer the hour of
the wrathful, inscrutable judge; no longer the one and the terrible
goal, the gulf of misery and eternal punishment. It is slowly
becoming--indeed, in some cases, it has already become--the wished-for
repose of a life that draws to its end. Its weight no longer oppresses
each one of our actions; and, above all--for this is the most striking
change--it has ceased to intrude itself into our morality. And is this
morality of ours less lofty, les