Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/95

 Aye! that it would, and will, brave lover of thy race, when more shall live the spirit thou hast breathed. But Faith is not yet dead; Hope still lives in human hearts; Charity is beginning to be a power in the world, and these three—blessed three—will yet work out the world's salvation. Strong hands, clear intellects, willing minds, are all that is needed to develope true human individuality, a thing of the future; and then a man and a woman will pass for the self-displayed value, the intrinsic worth manifested by Action. "It is not me they hate and ill-use; it is the fictitious personality they have given me. They will not take me as I am, but insist that I shall be what themselves desire I should be; and in crushing, slaying, killing this phantom which they choose to attach to my name, they are, alas, crushing, slaying, killing me!" These words were uttered by an almost broken-hearted man; they were true, and true not only of him, but of many a lonely and sensitive one beside. In the days when common sense shall reign, the diseases of the social body will be eradicated, and then the loneliness of talent and genius will be exceptional to the rule, instead of the reverse, as in these lonesome latter years. If men could but realize that every human groan echoes up through all the starry vaults, even to the eternal throne itself, they would not cause so many as they do, especially when they discover that every one of these groans must be expiated by the causer thereof. If men knew that every pang endured by a human being on earth, sweeps like a whirlwind of