dified, it declined to concern itself
further with the affairs or the future of the anthill--should we, who
stand to the insect as the great gods are supposed to stand to
ourselves, who judge it and dominate it, as we believe ourselves to be
dominated and judged; should we approve this ant, or, for all its
universality, regard it as either good or moral?

Reason, at its apogee, becomes sterile; and inertia would be its sole
teaching did it not, after recognising the pettiness, the nothingness,
of our passions and hopes, of our being, and lastly, of reason itself,
retrace its footsteps back to the point whence it shall be able once
more to take eager interest in all these poor trivialities, in this
same nothingness, as holding them the only things in the world for
which its assistance has value.

We know not whither we go, but may still rejoice in the journey; and
this will become the lighter, the happier, for our endeavour to picture
to ourselves the next place of halt. Where will this be? The
mountain-pass lies ahead, and threatens; but the roads already are
widening and becoming less rugged; the trees spread their branches,
crowned with fresh blossom; silent waters are flowing before us,
reposeful and peaceful. Tokens all these, it may be, of our nearing
the vastest valley mankind yet has seen from the height of the tortuous
paths it has ever been climbing! Shall we call it the "First Valley of
Leisure"? Distrust as we may the surprises the future may have in
store, be the troubles and cares that await us never so burdensome,
there still seems some ground for believing that the bulk of mankind
will know days when, thanks, it may be, to machinery, agricultural
chemistry, medicine perhaps, or I know not what dawning science, labour
will become less incessant, exhausting, less material, tyrannical,
pitiless. What use will humanity make of this leisure? On its
employment may be said to depend the whole destiny of man. Were it not
well that his counsellors now should begin to teach him to use such
leisure he has in a nobler and worthier fashion? It is the way in
which hours of freedom are spent that determines, as much as war or as
labour, the moral worth of a nation. It raises or lowers, it
replenishes or exhausts. At present we find, in these great cities of
ours, that three days' idleness will fill the hospitals with victims
whom weeks or months of toil had left unscathed.

7

Thus we return to the hap