The only reply to such loose talk is that it does matter, here and now, always and to all time, that right should triumph over wrong. It will not do to say that it matters now, but will not matter hereafter, for, if it is of no importance then, neither is it of any importance now. But if right-doing is the most important thing in the world, more important than happiness, more important to all time even than the perpetual redistribution of matter and motion, to whom is it important? Not exclusively, nor even primarily, to ourselves; for the essence of right-doing is the attempt to put self away and forget it, the yearning to be lifted above personal considerations and thought of self, the conviction that whilst it matters all the world to me, to do the right, the matter does not end with me. The matter is not of merely personal importance to me, nor important simply because I choose to think it so. Its value and significance are apprehended--alas! too rarely--by me, they are not created by me. Its significance and importance are real, not fictitious; that reality is not created by man, it is not a human prejudice, but exists independent of man and what he thinks. To matter and motion, those perpetual manifestations of the Power or Reality which underlies them, nothing can have any meaning or importance: it is only to a mind that things can be significant or important. If, then, the importance of right-doing is real, it is because it really matters to the Power, which underlies all things, that we should do right; and that Power must be of the nature of an intelligence, for it is only a mind which can either apprehend values or assign them. If the microcosm, man, can pass a valid sentence of condemnation upon the macrocosm, nature, it is only because and so far as his moral nature places him in direct communication with the heart of things and gives him knowledge of the will of that Power on which microcosm and macrocosm alike depend for their existence. If the distinction between right and wrong is one by which man can correctly judge between himself and the cosmos, the distinction and the judgment must proceed from a source superior to both. If it is not, then the Pessimistic interpretation of evolution falls to the ground, because it is based on the assumption that its condemnation of cosmic nature is a correct judgment. Not only does Pessimism fall, but the element of truth and reality which Pessimism contains must also be abandoned; if the distinction between right and wrong is not sufficient for the task put upon it by Pessimism, neither is it sufficient for us to build our lives on. In fine, either the ultimate defeat of the ethical process matters, or it does not. If it does not, why suffer sorrow and pain in the vain endeavour to stave it off? If it does, then to whom? No longer to man, for he will have joined the extinct fauna. Therefore to some moral intelligence to whom the triumph of right is a matter of importance.