bitter even to the rich, and which, as you may see
with your bodily eyes, the great change has swept away. More akin to our way of
looking at life was the spirit of the Middle Ages, to whom heaven and the life
of the next world was such a reality, that it became to them a part of the life
upon the earth; which accordingly they loved and adorned, in spite of the
ascetic doctrines of their formal creed, which bade them contemn it.
    But that also, with its assured belief in heaven and hell as two countries
in which to live, has gone, and now we do, both in word and in deed, believe in
the continuous life of the world of men, and as it were, add every day of that
common life to the little stock of days which our own mere individual experience
wins for us: and consequently we are happy. Do you wonder at it? In times past,
indeed, men were told to love their kind, to believe in the religion of humanity
and so forth. But look you, just in the degree that a man had elevation of mind
and refinement enough to be able to value this idea, was he repelled by the
obvious aspect of the individuals composing the mass which he was to worship;
and he could only evade that repulsion by making a conventional abstraction of
mankind that had little actual or historical relation to the race; which to his
eyes was divided into blind tyrants on the one hand and apathetic degraded
slaves on the other. But now, where is the difficulty in accepting the religion
of humanity, when the men and women who go to make up humanity are free, happy,
and energetic at least, and most commonly beautiful of body also, and surrounded
by beautiful things of their own fashioning, and a nature bettered and not
worsened by contact with mankind? This is what this age of the world has
reserved for us.«
    »It seems true,« said I, »or ought to be, if what my eyes have seen is a
token of the general life you lead. Can you now tell me anything of your
progress after the years of the struggle?«
    Said he: »I could easily tell you more than you have time to listen to; but
I can at least hint at one of the chief difficulties which had to be met: and
that was, that when men began to settle down after the war, and their labour had
pretty much filled up the gap in wealth caused by the destruction of that war, a
kind of disappointment seemed