Faith, very old, now
scared away by science, must be restored, brought back by the same
power that caused her departure--restored with new sway, deeper,
wider, higher than ever. Surely, this universal ennui, this coward
fear, this shuddering at death, these low, degrading views, are not
always to rule the spirit pervading future society, as it has the
past, and does the present. What the Roman Lucretius sought most
nobly, yet all too blindly, negatively to do for his age and its
successors, must be done positively by some great coming literatus,
especially poet, who, while remaining fully poet, will absorb whatever
science indicates, with spiritualism, and out of them, and out of his
own genius, will compose the great poem of death. Then will man indeed
confront Nature, and confront time and space, both with science, and
_con amore_, and take his right place, prepared for life, master of
fortune and misfortune. And then that which was long wanted will be
supplied, and the ship that had it not before in all her voyages, will
have an anchor.
There are still other standards, suggestions, for products of high
literatuses. That which really balances and conserves the social and
political world is not so much legislation, police, treaties, and
dread of punishment, as the latent eternal intuitional sense, in
humanity, of fairness, manliness, decorum, &c. Indeed, this perennial
regulation, control, and oversight, by self-suppliance, is _sine qua
non_ to democracy; and a highest widest aim of democratic literature
may well be to bring forth, cultivate, brace, and strengthen this
sense, in individuals and society.
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