He Recognizes That He Is In A World On Which We Have But
Recently Entered, And In Which Our Position Is Not Yet
Assured.
Here, standing on this mound, as on other occasions past
counting, I recognize and appreciate the enormous difference
which human associations make in the effect produced on us by
visible nature.
In this silent solitary place, with the
walled field which was once Calleva Atrebatum at my feet, I
yet have a sense of satisfaction, of security, never felt in a
land that had no historic past. The knowledge that my
individual life is but a span, a breath; that in a little
while I too must wither and mingle like one of those fallen
yellow leaves with the mould, does not grieve me. I know it
and yet disbelieve it; for am I not here alive, where men have
inhabited for thousands of years, feeling what I now feel
- their oneness with everlasting nature and the undying human
family? The very soil and wet carpet of moss on which their
feet were set, the standing trees and leaves, green or yellow,
the rain-drops, the air they breathed, the sunshine in their
eyes and hearts, was part of them, not a garment, but of their
very substance and spirit. Feeling this, death becomes an
illusion; and the illusion that the continuous life of the
species (its immortality) and the individual life are one and
the same is the reality and truth. An illusion, but, as Mill
says, deprive us of our illusions and life would be
intolerable. Happily we are not easily deprived of them,
since they are of the nature of instincts and ineradicable.
And this very one which our reason can prove to be the most
childish, the absurdest of all, is yet the greatest, the most
fruitful of good for the race. To those who have discarded
supernatural religion, it may be a religion, or at all events
the foundation to build one on. For there is no comfort to
the healthy natural man in being told that the good he does
will not be interred with his bones, since he does not wish to
think, and in fact refuses to think, that his bones will ever
be interred. Joy in the "choir invisible" is to him a mere
poetic fancy, or at best a rarefied transcendentalism, which
fails to sustain him. If altruism, or the religion of
humanity, is a living vigorous plant, and as some believe
flourishes more with the progress of the centuries, it must,
like other "soul-growths," have a deeper, tougher woodier root
in our soil.
Chapter Eight: A Gold Day At Silchester
It is little to a man's profit to go far afield if his chief
pleasure be in wild life, his main object to get nearer to the
creatures, to grow day by day more intimate with them, and to
see each day some new thing. Yet the distance has the same
fascination for him as for another - the call is as sweet and
persistent in his ears.
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