o less profound: the instinct of the just and the
unjust. And if instincts do indeed draw very near to the truth of
Nature, and must be respected by us in the degree of the force that is
in them, this one is perhaps the strongest of all, for it has struggled
alone against all the others combined, and still persists within us.
Nor is this the hour to reject it. Until other certitudes reach us, it
behoves us, who are men, to continue just in the human way and the
human sphere. We do not see far enough, or clearly enough, to be just
in another sphere. Let us not venture into a kind of abyss, out of
which races and peoples to come may perhaps find a passage, but
whereinto man, in so far as he is man, must not seek to penetrate. The
injustice of Nature ends by becoming justice for the race; she has time
before her, she can wait, her injustice is of her girth. But for us it
is too overwhelming, and our days are too few. Let us be satisfied
that force should reign in the universe, but equity in our heart.
Though the race be irresistibly, and perhaps justly, unjust, though
even the crowd appear possessed of rights denied to the isolated man,
and commit on occasions great, inevitable, and salutary crimes, it is
still the duty of each individual of the race, of every member of the
crowd, to remain just, while ever adding to and sustaining the
consciousness within him. Nor shall we be entitled to abandon this
duty till all the reasons of the great apparent injustice be known to
us; and those that are given us now, preservation of the species,
reproduction and selection of the strongest, ablest, "fittest," are not
sufficient to warrant so frightful a change. Let each one try by all
means to become the strongest, most skilful, the best adapted to the
necessities of the life that he cannot transform; but, so far, the
qualities that shall enable him to conquer, that shall give the fullest
play to his moral power and his intelligence, and shall truly make him
the happiest, most skilful, the strongest, and "fittest"--these
qualities are precisely the ones that are the most human, the most
honourable, and the most just.

23

"Within me there is more," runs the fine device inscribed on the beams
and pediment of an old patrician mansion at Bruges, which every
traveller visits; filling a corner of one of those tender and
melancholy quays, that are as forlorn and lifeless as though they
existed only on canvas. And so too might