the epicurean, and the results will prove that seriousness
is but a superficial glaze upon a world of fundamentally trivial
import. You and your acts and the nature of things will be alike
enveloped in a single formula, a universal _vanitas vanitatum_.

For the sake of simplicity I have written as if the verification might
occur in the life of a single philosopher,--which is manifestly untrue,
since the theories still face each other, and the facts of the world
give countenance to both. Rather should we expect, that, in a question
of this scope, the experience of the entire human race must make the
verification, and that all the evidence will not be 'in' till the final
integration of things, when the last man has had his say and
contributed his share to the still unfinished _x_. Then the proof will
be complete; then it will appear without doubt whether the moralistic x
has filled up the gap which alone kept the _M_ of the world from
forming an even and harmonious unity, or whether the {108}
non-moralistic _x_ has given the finishing touches which were alone
needed to make the _M_ appear outwardly as vain as it inwardly was.

But if this be so, is it not clear that the facts _M_, taken _per se_,
are inadequate to justify a conclusion either way in advance of my
action? My action is the complement which, by proving congruous or
not, reveals the latent nature of the mass to which it is applied. The
world may in fact be likened unto a lock, whose inward nature, moral or
unmoral, will never reveal itself to our simply expectant gaze. The
positivists, forbidding us to make any assumptions regarding it,
condemn us to eternal ignorance, for the 'evidence' which they wait for
can never come so long as we are passive. But nature has put into our
hands two keys, by which we may test the lock. If we try the moral key
_and it fits_, it is a moral lock. If we try the unmoral key and _it_
fits, it is an unmoral lock. I cannot possibly conceive of any other
sort of 'evidence' or 'proof' than this. It is quite true that the
co-operation of generations is needed to educe it. But in these
matters the solidarity (so called) of the human race is a patent fact.
The essential thing to notice is that our active preference is a
legitimate part of the game,--that it is our plain business as men to
try one of the keys, and the one in which we most confide. If then the
proof exist not till I have acted, and I must needs in acting r