d
the first word of the enigma, and shall proceed, with a freer spirit
and a more tranquil heart, to the search for its last secret.

Finally, it comprises all the human virtues; and none but itself can
offer the welcoming smile whereby these are ennobled and purified, none
but itself can accord them the right to penetrate deep into our moral
life. For every virtue must be maleficent and steeped in artifice that
cannot support the fixed and eager regard of justice. And so do we
find it too at the heart of our every ideal. It is at the centre of
our love of truth, at the centre of our love of beauty. It is kindness
and pity, it is generosity, heroism, love; for all these are the acts
of justice of one who has risen sufficiently high to perceive that
justice and injustice are not exclusively confined to what lies before
him, to the narrow circle of obligations chance may have imposed, but
that they stretch far beyond years, beyond neighbouring destinies,
beyond what he regards as his duty, beyond what he loves, beyond what
he seeks and encounters, beyond what he approves or rejects, beyond his
doubts and his fears, beyond the wrong-doing and even the crimes of the
men, his brothers.

II

THE EVOLUTION OF MYSTERY

It is not unreasonable to believe that the paramount interest of life,
all that is truly lofty and remarkable in the destiny of man, reposes
almost entirely in the mystery that surrounds us; in the two mysteries,
it may be, that are mightiest, most dreadful of all--fatality and
death. And indeed there are many whom the fatigue induced in their
minds by the natural uncertainties of science has almost compelled to
accept this belief. I too believe, though in a somewhat different
fashion, that the study of mystery in all its forms is the noblest to
which the mind of man can devote itself; and truly it has ever been the
occupation and care of those who in science and art, in philosophy and
literature, have refused to be satisfied merely to observe and portray
the trivial, well-recognised truths, facts, and realities of life. And
we find that the success of these men in their endeavour, the depth of
their insight into all that they know, has most strictly accorded with
the respect in which they held all they did not know, with the dignity
that their mind or imagination was able to confer on the sum of
unknowable forces. Our consciousness of the unknown wherein we have
being gives life a meaning and