Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/215

190 these tilings live is not intolerable. But then come the spirits that sing to Prometheus, in his anguish, of immortal deeds done on the earth, of great thoughts and lofty passions. All these are born of the conflict, and have their being in the midst of the terrors of the tyrant’s dominion. It is indeed no perfect world, this; and one needs some higher light, such as Prometheus has, to prophesy that the good will ever triumph; but one sees forthwith that from the perfect world, if it ever comes, these great strivings for good, this sublime devotion and love and heroism, must not wholly vanish. These things must not be laid aside like old garments whenever Prometheus wins and is free; their spirit must be preserved as an element in the higher life of the future. If they are worth anything, their true nature must be eternal.

And as for the real worth of this world in which the evil is so far triumphant — we learn something of that from Demogorgon. This mysterious being has indeed no very definite religious philosophy to offer. He meets plain questions with vague answers, when Asia and Panthea catechise him; and one feels it to be well for his reputation as a profound teacher that his questioners are neither men nor Socratic inquirers. But still what he tells of the deep truth that is “imageless,” is enough to make us feel that even this world of horrors is not without a divine significance. Jove reigns, but, whatever the visible world may be, the truth of things is a world of hope and love, where the real God is somehow above all and through all, a Spirit of Eternal Goodness.