Let us grant even, for the argument, that nothing more is possible than
mankind has yet achieved. There remains the hope that that which human
nature at its best has been capable of may be realized by human nature
at large. In their great moments the great men have seen this. That last
sentence is, indeed, a paraphrase from a remark at the end of Herbert
Spencer's "Ethics." Ruskin--to choose the polar antithesis of the
Spencerian mind--declares that "there are no known limits to the
nobleness of person or mind which the human creature may attain if we
wisely attend to the laws of its birth and training." Wordsworth asks
whether Nature throws any bars across the hope that what one is millions
may be. Take it, then, that nothing more is conceivable in the way of
mathematics than a Newton, or of drama than an AEschylus or a
Shakespeare, or of sacrifice than a Christ. These, then, are types of
what will be. They demonstrate what human nature is capable of. What one
is, why may not millions be? Here is an ideal to work for. Here is
something real to worship, to dedicate a life to. It is not merely that
we can make smoother the paths of future generations--which George
Meredith declared to be the great purpose and duty of our lives--but
that, as Ruskin suggests in the foregoing quotation, we may raise the
inherent quality of those future generations, so that they can make
their own ways smooth and straight and high.
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