nothingness). Moreover, the great Turanian family, actually
occupying all Eastern Asia, has ever ignored it; and the
200,000,000 of Chinese Confucians, the mass of the nation,
protest emphatically against the mainstay of the western creeds,
because it "unfits men for the business and duty of life by
fixing their speculations on an unknown world." And even its
votaries, in all ages, races and faiths, cannot deny that the
next world is a copy, more or less idealized, of the present; and
that it lacks a single particular savouring of originality. It is
in fact a mere continuation; and the continuation is "not
proven."

It is most hard to be a man;

and the Pilgrim's sole consolation is in self-cultivation, and in
the pleasures of the affections. This sympathy may be an indirect
self-love, a reflection of the light of egotism: still it is so
transferred as to imply a different system of convictions. It
requires a different name: to call benevolence "self-love" is to
make the fruit or flower not only depend upon a root for
development (which is true), but the very root itself (which is
false). And, finally, his ideal is of the highest: his praise is
reserved for:

--Lives
Lived in obedience to the inner law
Which cannot alter.