r indeed in
this social injustice of ours, it is not the human part that is capable
of arresting our passion for equity; it is the part that a great number
of men still attribute to a god, to a kind of fatality, or to imaginary
laws of Nature.

12

This last inactive part shrinks every day. Nor is this because the
mystery of justice is about to disappear. A mystery rarely disappears;
as a rule, it only shifts its ground. But it is often most important
and most desirable that we should bring about this change of abode. It
may be said that two or three such changes almost stand for the whole
progress of human thought: the dislodgment of two or three mysteries
from a place where they did harm, and their transference to a place
where they become inoffensive and capable of doing good. Sometimes
even, there is no need for the mystery to change its place; we have
only to identify it under another name. What was once called "the
gods," we now term "life." And if life be as inexplicable as were the
gods, we are at least the gainers to the extent that none has the right
to speak or do wrong in its name. The aim of human thought can
scarcely be to destroy mystery, or lessen it, for that seems
impossible. We may be sure that the same quantity of mystery will ever
enwrap the world, since it is the quality of the world, as of mystery,
to be infinite. But honest human thought will seek above all to
determine what are the veritable irreducible mysteries. It will
endeavour to strip them of all that does not belong to them, that is
not truly theirs, of the additions made by our errors, our fears, and
our falsehoods. And as the artificial mysteries vanish, so will the
ocean of veritable mystery stretch out further and further: the mystery
of life, its aim and its origin; the mystery of thought; the mystery
that has been called "the primitive accident," or the "perhaps
unknowable essence of reality."

13

Where had men conceived the mystery of justice to lodge? It pervaded
the world. At one moment it was supposed to rest in the hands of the
gods, at another it engulfed and mastered the gods themselves. It had
been imagined everywhere except in man. It had dwelt in the sky, it
had lurked behind rocks, it had governed the air and the sea, it had
peopled an inaccessible universe. Then at last we peered into its
imaginary retreats, we pressed close and examined; and its throne of
clouds tottered, it faded away; but a