Page:The Story of Philosophy.pdf/445

 theatre of decay, a gloomy drama of energy in irreversible degradation; and it will itself be resolved into the dust and nebula from which it came. The cycle of evolution and dissolution will be complete. The cycle will begin again, and endless times again; but always this will be the dénouement. Memento mori is written upon the face of life; and every birth and is a prelude to decay and death.

First Principles is a magnificent drama, telling with almost classic calm the story of the rise and fall, the evolution and dissolution, of planets and life and man; but it is a tragic drama, for which the fittest epilogue is Hamlet's word—"The rest is silence." Is there any wonder that men and women nurtured on faith and hope rebelled against this summary of existence? We know that we must die; but as it is a matter that will take care of itself, we prefer to think of life. There was in Spencer an almost Schopenhauerian sense of the futility of human effort. At the end of his triumphant career he expressed his feeling that life was not worth living. He had the philosopher's disease of seeing so far ahead that all the little pleasant shapes and colors of existence passed under his nose unseen.

He knew that people would not relish a philosophy whose last word was not God and heaven, but equilibration and dissolution, and in concluding this First Part he defended with unusual eloquence and fervor his right to speak the dark truths that he saw.