hich separates all that pertains
to the being who rises from all that is his who descends. Some will
say that the hour is not yet when man can thus make clear division
between the part of the spirit and that of the flesh. But when shall
that hour be looked for if those for whom it should long since have
sounded still suffer the obscurest prejudice of the mass to guide them
when they set forth in search of their happiness? When they achieve
glory and riches, when love comes to meet them, they will be free, it
may be, from a few of the coarser satisfactions of vanity, a few of the
grosser excesses; but beyond this they strive not at all to secure a
happiness that shall be more spiritual, more purely human. The
advantage they have does not teach them to widen the circle of material
exaction, to discard what is less justifiable. In their attitude
towards the pleasures of life they submit to the same spiritual
deprivation as, let us say, some cultured man who may have wandered
into a theatre where the play being performed is not one of the five or
six masterpieces of universal literature. He is fully aware that his
neighbours' applause and delight are called forth, in the main, by more
or less obnoxious prejudices on the subject of honour, glory, religion,
patriotism, sacrifice, liberty, or love--or perhaps by some feeble,
dreary poetical effusion. None the less, he will find himself affected
by the general enthusiasm; and it will be necessary for him, almost at
every instant, to pull himself violently together, to make startled
appeal to every conviction within him, in order to convince himself
that these partisans of hoary errors are wrong, notwithstanding their
number, and that he, with his isolated reason, alone is right.

3

Indeed, when we consider the relation of man to matter, it is
surprising to find how little light has yet been thrown upon it, how
little has been definitely fixed. Elementary, imperious, as this
relation undoubtedly is, humanity has always been wavering, uncertain,
passing from the most dangerous confidence to the most systematic
distrust, from adoration to horror, from asceticism and complete
renouncement to their corresponding extremes. The days are past when
an irrational, useless abstinence was preached, and put into
practice--an abstinence often fully as harmful as habitual excess. We
are entitled to all that helps to maintain, or advance, the development
of the body; this is our