ourage; on the
contrary, it enhanced his confidence, his concentration, and spurred
him upwards, like the flame that, confined to a narrow area, rises
higher and higher, alone in the night, urged on by the darkness. He
accepted the decree of fate, that allotted slavery to the bulk of
mankind. Sorrowfully but with full conviction, did he submit to the
irrevocable law; wherein he once again gave proof of his piety and his
virtue. He retired into himself, and there, in a kind of sunless,
motionless void, became still more just, still more humane. And in
each succeeding century do we find a similar ardour, self-centred and
solitary, among those who were wise and good. The name of more than
one immovable law might change, but its infinite part remained ever the
same; and each one regarded it with the like resigned and chastened
melancholy. But we of to-day--what course are we to pursue? We know
that iniquity is no longer necessary. We have invaded the region of
the gods, of destiny, and unknown laws. These may still control
disease or accident, perhaps, no less than the tempest, the
lightning-flash, and most of the mysteries of death--we have not yet
penetrated to them--but we are well aware that poverty, wretchedness,
hopeless toil, slavery, famine, are completely outside their domain.
It is we who organise these, we who maintain and distribute them.
These frightful scourges, that have grown so familiar, are wielded by
us alone; and belief in their superhuman origin is becoming rarer and
rarer. The religious, impassable ocean, that excused and protected the
retreat into himself of the sage and the man of good, now only exists
as a vague recollection. To-day Marcus Aurelius could no longer say
with the same serenity: "They go in search of refuges, of rural
cottages, of mountains and the seashore; thou too art wont to cherish
an eager desire for these things. But is this not the act of an
ignorant, unskilled man, seeing that it is granted thee at whatever
hour thou pleasest to retire within thyself? It is not possible for
man to discover a retreat more tranquil, less disturbed by affairs,
than that which he finds in his soul; especially if he have within him
those things the contemplation of which suffices to procure immediate
enjoyment of the perfect calm, which is no other, to my mind, than the
perfect agreement of soul."

Other matters concern us to-day than this agreement of soul; or let us
rather say that w