y men, all men, must by and by come to know it. It lies there clear,
for whosoever will take the _spectacles_ off his eyes and honestly look,
to know! For such a man the Unbelieving Century, with its unblessed
Products, is already past; a new century is already come. The old
unblessed Products and Performances, as solid as they look, are
Phantasms, preparing speedily to vanish. To this and the other noisy,
very great-looking Simulacrum with the whole world huzzaing at its
heels, he can say, composedly stepping aside: Thou art not _true_; thou
art not extant, only semblant; go thy way!--Yes, hollow Formulism, gross
Benthamism, and other unheroic atheistic Insincerity is visibly and
even rapidly declining. An unbelieving Eighteenth Century is but an
exception,--such as now and then occurs. I prophesy that the world will
once more become _sincere_; a believing world; with _many_ Heroes in it,
a heroic world! It will then be a victorious world; never till then.

Or indeed what of the world and its victories? Men speak too much about
the world. Each one of us here, let the world go how it will, and be
victorious or not victorious, has he not a Life of his own to lead? One
Life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second chance to
us forevermore! It were well for us to live not as fools and simulacra,
but as wise and realities. The world's being saved will not save us; nor
the world's being lost destroy us. We should look to ourselves: there is
great merit here in the "duty of staying at home"! And, on the whole,
to say truth, I never heard of "world's" being "saved" in any other way.
That mania of saving worlds is itself a piece of the Eighteenth Century
with its windy sentimentalism. Let us not follow it too far. For the
saving of the _world_ I will trust confidently to the Maker of the
world; and look a little to my own saving, which I am more competent
to!--In brief, for the world's sake, and for our own, we will rejoice
greatly that Scepticism, Insincerity, Mechanical Atheism, with all their
poison-dews, are going, and as good as gone.--

Now it was under such conditions, in those times of Johnson, that our
Men of Letters had to live. Times in which there was properly no truth
in life. Old truths had fallen nigh dumb; the new lay yet hidden, not
trying to speak. That Man's Life here below was a Sincerity and Fact,
and would forever continue such, no new intimation, in that dusk of
the world, had yet dawned.