it does in the midst of a larger process, will
surely not be without some congruity with the universe. Every creature
lends potential values to a world in which it can satisfy some at least
of its demands and learn, perhaps, to modify the others. Happiness is
always a natural and an essentially possible thing, and a total despair,
since it ignores those goods which are attainable, can express only a
partial experience. But before considering in what ways a disciplined
soul might make its peace with reality, we may consider what an
undisciplined soul in the first instance desires; and from this
starting-point we may trace her chastening and education, observing the
ideal compensations which may console her for lost illusions.

CHAPTER XIV

IDEAL IMMORTALITY

[Sidenote: Olympian immortality the first ideal.]

In order to give the will to live frank and direct satisfaction, it
would have been necessary to solve the problem of perpetual motion in
the animal body, as nature has approximately solved it in the solar
system. Nutrition should have continually repaired all waste, so that
the cycle of youth and age might have repeated itself yearly in every
individual, like summer and winter on the earth. Nor are some hints of
such an equilibrium altogether wanting. Convalescence, sudden good
fortune, a belated love, and even the April sunshine or morning air,
bring about a certain rejuvenescence in man prophetic of what is not
ideally impossible--perpetuity and constant reinforcement in his vital
powers. Had nature furnished the elixir of life, or could art have
discovered it, the whole face of human society would have been changed.
The earth once full, no more children would have been begotten and
parental instincts would have been atrophied for want of function. All
men would have been contemporaries and, having all time before them for
travel and experiment, would have allied themselves eventually with what
was most congenial to them and would have come to be bound only by free
and friendly ties. They would all have been well known and would have
acted perpetually in their ultimate and true character, like the
immortal gods. One might have loved fixity, like Hestia, and another
motion, like Hermes; a third might have been untiring in the plastic
arts, like Hephaestus, or, like Apollo, in music; while the infinite
realms of mathematics and philosophy would have lain open to spirits of
a quality not represented in Ho