Page:(Commercial character) The Joseph Fisher lecture in commerce, delivered at the University of Adelaide (IA commercialcharac00jessrich).pdf/23

19 other respects—we dare not be pessimists. Every thinking human being must be on the side of the angels. None can calmly face the terrible alternative so vividly depicted by Pope in the concluding lines of The Duncead:—

Can it be possible that the development we see around us, the improvement in the conditions of life, the accumulated and recorded knowledge, the universal growth can be without their beneficent influence upon man? Can he alone remain stagnant, when to remain stagnant means in this busy world to go backwards? Stagnation is to my mind impossible for the individual, the state, or the race. I know that there are those who in their blindness would put back the clock, but if I read aright, the results of their efforts can be but as rocks in a rushing stream, which may divide but can never obstruct the mighty force hurling itself in tumultuous majesty towards a boundless sea. The crystal face of conscience is too often made dim and obscure by the fetid breath of feverish competition, or the foul exhalation of insensate greed, and we can only hope to foil the demon pessimism by cherishing the conviction expressed by Carlyle that the world is not founded on falsehood and jargon, but on truth and reason. May I be pardoned here for pleading the tyro's