ould
paradise properly be good in the absence of a sentient principle by
which the goodness was perceived? Outward goods and evils seem
practically indistinguishable except in so far as they result in
getting moral judgments made about them. But then the moral judgments
seem the main thing, and the outward facts mere perishing instruments
for their production. This is subjectivism. Every one must at some
time have wondered at that strange paradox of our moral nature, that,
though the {168} pursuit of outward good is the breath of its nostrils,
the attainment of outward good would seem to be its suffocation and
death. Why does the painting of any paradise or Utopia, in heaven or
on earth, awaken such yawnings for nirvana and escape? The white-robed
harp-playing heaven of our sabbath-schools, and the ladylike tea-table
elysium represented in Mr. Spencer's Data of Ethics, as the final
consummation of progress, are exactly on a par in this
respect,--lubberlands, pure and simple, one and all.[7] We look upon
them from this delicious mess of insanities and realities, strivings
and deadnesses, hopes and fears, agonies and exultations, which forms
our present state, and _tedium vitae_ is the only sentiment they awaken
in our breasts. To our crepuscular natures, born for the conflict, the
Rembrandtesque moral chiaroscuro, the shifting struggle of the sunbeam
in the gloom, such pictures of light upon light are vacuous and
expressionless, and neither to be enjoyed nor understood. If _this_ be
the whole fruit of the victory, we say; if the generations of mankind
suffered and laid down their lives; if prophets confessed and martyrs
sang in the fire, and all the sacred tears were shed for no other end
than that a race of creatures of such unexampled insipidity should
succeed, and protract _in saecula saeculorum_ their contented and
inoffensive lives,--why, at such a rate, better lose than win the
battle, or at all events better ring down the curtain before the last
act of the play, so that a business that began so importantly may be
saved from so singularly flat a winding-up.

{169}

All this is what I should instantly say, were I called on to plead for
gnosticism; and its real friends, of whom you will presently perceive I
am not one, would say without difficulty a great deal more. Regarded
as a stable finality, every outward good becomes a mere weariness to
the flesh. It must be menaced, be occasionally lost, for its g