y where there were no remains of
antiquity, no links with the past, the feeling would be very much more
poignant, and in some scenes and moods would be like that sense of
desolation which assails us at the thought of the heartless voids and
immensities of the universe.

He recognizes that he is in a world on which we have but recently
entered, and in which our position is not yet assured.

Here, standing on this mound, as on other occasions past counting,
I recognize and appreciate the enormous difference which human
associations make in the effect produced on us by visible nature. In
this silent solitary place, with the walled field which was once Calleva
Atrebatum at my feet, I yet have a sense of satisfaction, of security,
never felt in a land that had no historic past. The knowledge that my
individual life is but a span, a breath; that in a little while I too
must wither and mingle like one of those fallen yellow leaves with the
mould, does not grieve me. I know it and yet disbelieve it; for am I
not here alive, where men have inhabited for thousands of years, feeling
what I now feel--their oneness with everlasting nature and the undying
human family? The very soil and wet carpet of moss on which their
feet were set, the standing trees and leaves, green or yellow, the
rain-drops, the air they breathed, the sunshine in their eyes and
hearts, was part of them, not a garment, but of their very substance and
spirit. Feeling this, death becomes an illusion; and the illusion that
the continuous life of the species (its immortality) and the individual
life are one and the same is the reality and truth. An illusion, but,
as Mill says, deprive us of our illusions and life would be intolerable.
Happily we are not easily deprived of them, since they are of the nature
of instincts and ineradicable. And this very one which our reason
can prove to be the most childish, the absurdest of all, is yet the
greatest, the most fruitful of good for the race. To those who have
discarded supernatural religion, it may be a religion, or at all events
the foundation to build one on. For there is no comfort to the healthy
natural man in being told that the good he does will not be interred
with his bones, since he does not wish to think, and in fact refuses
to think, that his bones will ever be interred. Joy in the "choir
invisible" is to him a mere poetic fancy, or at best a rarefied
transcendentalism, which fails to sustain him. If altruism