Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/191

 Meanwhile, men were to worry, somehow, through to-day—doing as infrequent evil as they conveniently could, exercising as much bravery and honesty and benevolence as they happened to possess, through a life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits. Men felt the routine to be niggardly: but to-morrow—as their priests and bonzes, their flamens and imauns, their medicine men and popes and rectors, were unanimous—would be quite different.

To-day alone was real. Never was man brought into contact with reality save through the evanescent emotions and sensations of that single moment, that infinitesimal fraction of a second, which was passing now—and it was this, precisely, that you were to disregard. Such was the burden of all dead and lingering faiths alike. Here was, perhaps, only another instance of man-*kind's abhorrence of actualities; and man's quaint dislike of facing reality was here disguised as a high moral principle. That was why all art, which strove to make the sensations of a moment soul-satisfying, was dimly felt to be irreligious. For art performed what religion only promised.