Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/433

1866.]. Herbert Spencer thus maintains the necessity of the expression of man's deepest convictions, in a passage instinct with nobleness of thought and dignity of utterance:—

"Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view. Let him duly realize the fact, that opinion is the agency through which character adapts external arrangements to itself,—that his opinion rightly forms part of this agency,—is a unit of force, constituting, with other such units, the general power which works out social changes,—and he will perceive that he may properly give full utterance to his innermost conviction, leaving it to produce what effect it may. It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities and aspirations and beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of the time. He must remember that, while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future; and that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. He, like every other man, may properly consider himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the Unknown Cause; and when the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain belief, he is thereby authorized to profess and act out that belief. For, to render in their highest sense the words of the poet,

'Nature is made better by no mean,

But nature makes that mean: over that art

Which you say adds to nature, is an art

That nature makes.'

"Not as adventitious, therefore, will the wise man regard the faith which is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world,—knowing that, if he can effect the change he aims at, well: if not, well also, though not so well."

IOGENES. Eve did not enter into the original plan; she was an unlucky afterthought. Listen to Milton:—

"O, why did God,

Creator wise, that peopled highest heaven

With spirits masculine?"

You observe that there are no feminine angels in heaven?

Aristippus. So much the better for us, if we have them all here.

Diogenes. For the same reason, probably, we are told that there will be neither marrying nor giving in marriage hereafter.

Aristippus. Not at all. There will be so many more women in heaven than men, that any marriage, except of the Mormon kind, would be impossible.

Diogenes.

"O, why did God create at last This novelty on earth, this fair defect Of nature?"

I have always wondered why.

Aristippus. You forget that it was Eve who first picked fruit from the tree of knowledge.

Diogenes. The only use she made of it was to get the idea of dress; and the primeval curse still clings to man, in the shape of milliners' bills.

Aristippus. Nevertheless we ought to be grateful to her for her enterprising spirit. Whatever her motives may have been, you must admit that her move was in the right direction. Where would we be now, had the future of