Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/216

Rh To have found this out in the midst of all the evil is surely not to have found life wholly vain.

But then what happens? By the accident that, according to Shelley, rules the world, the revolution is accomplished, and Zeus is hurled headlong into the abyss. What glorious life shall now begin? When the deep and magnificent truth that was felt to be beneath all the horror of the tyrant’s reign, comes out into full light, what tongue shall be able to sing the glories of that beatific vision? We listen eagerly — and we are disappointed. Prometheus arises grandly from his bed of torture, and then — he forthwith bethinks himself of a very pretty cave, where one might be content to rest a long time in the refined company of agreeable women. There one will lie, and wreathe flowers, and tell tales, and sing songs, and laugh and weep; and the hours will fly swiftly by. And then what will become of the rest of the world? Oh, this world simply becomes a theatre of like individual enjoyments. Everybody to his cave and his flowers and his agreeable companions. And that will then be all. No organization; just good fellowship and fragmentary amusements.

No, that cannot be all. Shelley felt as much, and added the last act of the play. There we are to have depicted grandly and vaguely the life of organized love. The world shall be all alive, and the universal life shall join in the hymn of praise. All the powers of reality shall feel the new impulse of perfect harmony, and what shall spring from their union shall be some higher kind of existence, in which there is no longer to be any talk of thine and