believe that this is the conviction of any human mind. Rather I would
think that despair at an insoluble problem, and perhaps impatience with
those who pretend to solve it, bring about a resolute disregard of
everything beyond the physical fact, and so at length a self-deception
which seems obtuseness.



X.


It may well be that what we call the unknowable will be for ever the
unknown. In that thought is there not a pathos beyond words? It may be
that the human race will live and pass away; all mankind, from him who in
the world's dawn first shaped to his fearful mind an image of the Lord of
Life, to him who, in the dusking twilight of the last age, shall crouch
before a deity of stone or wood; and never one of that long lineage have
learnt the wherefore of his being. The prophets, the martyrs, their
noble anguish vain and meaningless; the wise whose thought strove to
eternity, and was but an idle dream; the pure in heart whose life was a
vision of the living God, the suffering and the mourners whose solace was
in a world to come, the victims of injustice who cried to the Judge
Supreme--all gone down into silence, and the globe that bare them
circling dead and cold through soundless space. The most tragic aspect
of such a tragedy is that it is not unthinkable. The soul revolts, but
dare not see in this revolt the assurance of its higher destiny. Viewing
our life thus, is it not easier to believe that the tragedy is played
with no spectator? And of a truth, of a truth, what spectator can there
be? The day may come when, to all who live, the Name of Names will be
but an empty symbol, rejected by reason and by faith. Yet the tragedy