ncomparably weaker that it cannot be used as a substitute, has yet
proved its strength in every age of the world. As our knowledge of
nature and the growth of our social development impress upon us more
strongly every day that we live the close connection in which we all
stand to each other, the intimate "solidarity" of all human interests,
it is not likely to grow weaker; a young man will break a blood-vessel
for the honor of a boat-club; a savage will allow himself to be tortured
to death for the credit of his tribe; why should it be called visionary
to believe that a civilized human being will make personal sacrifices
for the benefit of men whom he has perhaps not seen, but whose intimate
dependence upon himself he realizes at every moment of his life? May not
such a motive generate a predominant passion with men framed to act upon
it by a truly generous system of education? And is it not an insult to
our best feelings and a most audacious feat of logic, to declare on _a
priori_ grounds that such feelings must be a straw in the balance when
weighed against our own personal interest in the fate of a being whose
nature is inconceivable to us, whose existence is not certain, whose
dependence upon us is indeterminate, simply because it is said that, in
some way or other, it and we are continuous?

The real meaning, however, of this clinging to another life is doubtless
very different. It is simply an expression of the reluctance of the
human being to use the awful word "never." As the years take from us,
one by one, all that we have loved, we try to avert our gaze; we are
fain to believe that in some phantom world all will be given back to us,
and that our toys have only been laid by in the nursery upstairs. Who,
indeed, can deny that to give up these dreams involves a cruel pang?
But, then, who but the most determined optimist can deny that a cruel
pang is inevitable? Is not the promise too shadowy to give us real
satisfaction? The whole lesson of our lives is summed up in teaching us
to say "never" without needless flinching, or, in other words, in
submitting to the inevitable. The theologian bids us repent, and waste
our lives in vain regrets for the past, and in tremulous hopes that the
past may yet be the future. Science tells us--what, indeed, we scarcely
need to learn from science--that what is gone, is gone, and that the
best wisdom of life is the acceptance of accomplished facts.

"The moving Finger writes, an