CHAPTER XI
POSTSCRIPT
SO at the end we are compelled to confess an essential ignorance. To-day’s “human comedy” still remains unwritten. Those who have essayed it are always unconsciously or deliberately foreshortening or distorting: exhibiting excess of darkness or sunshine. We know little of the forces fermenting in that strange laboratory which is the birthplace of the coming time. We are uncertain whether civilisation is about to blossom into flower, or wither in tangle of dead leaves and faded gold. We can find no answer to the inquiry, whether we are about to plunge into a new period of tumult and upheaval, whether we are destined to an indefinite prolongation of the present half-lights and shadows, whether, as we sometimes try to anticipate, a door is to be suddenly opened, revealing unimaginable glories.
In face of such uncertainty, the verdict is often one of criticism and despair. “The wisest man has warned us”—so runs a mournful verdict—“not to expect the world ever to improve so much that the better part of mankind will be in the majority. No wise man ever undertakes to correct the disorders of the public estate.” “He who cannot endure the madness of the public, but goeth about to think he can cure it, is himself no less mad than the rest.”
Such a verdict, however, pays little heed to the effort of those whose unregarded labour, now in patient adherence to duty, now in “something more heroical than this age affecteth,” has bought the good things which are the common heritage of to-day: a widespread comfort, opportunities for happiness and content, freedom which is always but hardly won and but hardly maintained.
Optimism and pessimism, in face of any civilisation in a changing world, are equally untrue, equally futile. All human societies mingle selfishness and sacrifice, exultation and weariness, laughter and tears. No one age is especially wicked, especially tired, especially noble. All ages are wicked, tired, noble. Progress is always impossible and always proceeding. Preservation is always hazardous and always attained. Every class is unfit to govern; and the government of the world continues. Austerities, simplicities, and a common danger breed virtues and devotions which are the parents of prosperity. Prosperity breeds arrogance, extravagance, and class hatreds. Opulence and pride in their turn breed national disasters. And these disasters engender the austerities and simplicities which start the cycle again anew.
To accept all and to reject all are in this case equally desperate courses. To turn aside in despair, to hold aloof in disdain, to proclaim from the heart of comfort an easy approval, are policies traitorous to the public good.
A king of France—so runs the medieval legend—when travelling in Catalonia, discovered an ancient man engaged unremittingly in the planting of date-kernels. “Why?” he asked, “do you sow the seeds of a tree of such tardy growth, seeing that the dates will not ripen till a hundred years be passed?” “Am I not then eating,” was the answer, “the fruit of trees planted by my forefathers, who took thought for those who were to come? And shall not I do like unto them?”[31]
It may be that the men “who took thought for those who were to come” will be found upon the winning side.