But Truth, my dear Sir, is higher
than you, than I, than all those that ever have, or ever will inhabit
the earth. We may believe that we obey the Great Goddess, but in
fact we serve only the _Di minores_, the saints in the side chapels,
alternately adored and neglected by the crowd. The one in honour of
whom men are now killing and mutilating themselves in a Corybantic
frenzy, can evidently be no longer yours nor mine. The ideal of the
Country is a god, great and cruel, who will leave to the future the
image of a sort of bugaboo Cronos, or of his Olympian son whom Christ
superseded. Your ideal of humanity is the highest rung of the ladder,
the announcement of the new god--who will be dethroned later on by one
higher still, who will embrace more of the universe. The ideal and
life never cease to evolve, and this continual advance forms the
genuine interest of the world to the liberal mind; but if the mind can
constantly rise without rest or interruption, in the world of fact
progress is made step by step, and a scant few inches are gained in
the whole of a lifetime. Humanity limps along, and your mistake, the
only one, is that you are two or three days' journey ahead of it,
but--perhaps with good reason--that is one of the mistakes most
difficult to forgive.
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