e a good workman repairing thither to execute the
labours imposed upon him by the commands of to-day, but as a too
passive, too credulous pilgrim, content idly to contemplate beautiful,
motionless ruins--then, the more glorious, the happier that our past
may have been, with all the more suspicion should it be regarded by us.

Nor should we yield to the instinct that bids us accord it profound
respect, if this respect induce the fear in us that we may disturb its
nice equilibrium. Better the ordinary past, content with its befitting
place in the shadow, than the sumptuous past which claims to govern
what has travelled beyond its reach. Better a mediocre but living
present, which acts as though it were alone in the world, than a
present which proudly expires in the chains of a marvellous long ago.
A single step that we take at this hour towards an uncertain goal, is
far more important to us than the thousand leagues we covered in our
march towards a dazzling triumph in the days that were. Our past had
no other mission than to lift us to the moment at which we are, and
there equip us with the needful experience and weapons, the needful
thought and gladness. If, at this precise moment, it take from us and
divert to itself one particle of our energy, then, however glorious it
may have been, it still was useless, and had better never have been.
If we allow it to arrest a gesture that we were about to make, then is
our death beginning; and the edifices of the future will suddenly take
the semblance of tombs.

More dangerous still than the past of happiness and glory is the one
inhabited by overpowering and too dearly cherished phantoms. Many an
existence perishes in the coils of a fond recollection. And yet, were
the dead to return to this earth, they would say, I fancy, with the
wisdom that must be theirs who have seen what the ephemeral light still
hides from us: "Dry your eyes. There comes to us no comfort from your
tears: exhausting you, they exhaust us also. Detach yourself from us,
banish us from your thoughts, until such time as you can think of us
without strewing tears on the life we still live in you. We endure
only in your recollection; but you err in believing that your regrets
alone can touch us. It is the things you do that prove to us we are
not forgotten, and rejoice our manes; and this without your knowing it,
without any necessity that you should turn towards us. Each time that
our pale image sadd