In this way, through what may be called the offspring begotten on the historic sense by science, the mind has turned its regard into the future and seemed to discern there a continuation of the same law of progress which it saw working in the past. Hence have arisen the manifold dreams and visions of socialism, altruism, humanitarianism, and all the other isms that would fix the hope of mankind upon some coming perfectibility of human life, and that like Prometheus in the play have implanted blind hopes in the hearts of men. It is indeed one of the most curious instances of the recrudescence of ideas to see the mediæval visions of a city of golden streets and eternal bliss in another existence brought down to the future of this world itself. What to the mystic of that age was to come suddenly, with the twinkling of an eye, when we are changed and have put away mortal things, when the angel of the Apocalypse has sworn that time shall be no longer,--all this, the heavenly city of joy and endless content, is now to be the natural outcome here in this world of causes working in time. The theory is beautiful in itself and might satisfy the hunger of the heart, even though its main hope concerns only generations to come, were it not for a lingering and fatal suspicion that progress does not involve increased capability of happiness to the individual, and that somehow the race does not move toward content. Physical comfort has perhaps become more widely distributed, but of the placid joy of life the recent years have known singularly little; we need but turn over the pages of the more representative poets and prose writers of the past sixty years to discover how deep is the unrest of our souls. The higher literature has come to be chiefly the "blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised"; and missing the note of deeper peace we sigh at times even for A draught of dull complacency. Alas, those who would find a resting-place for the spirit in the relations of man to man seem not to reckon that the very essence--if such a term may be used of so contingent a nature--that the very essence of this world's life is motion and change and contention, and that Peace spreads her wings in another and purer atmosphere. One might suppose that a single glance into the heart would show how vain are such aspirations, and how utterly dreary and illusory is every conceived ideal of progress and socialism because each and all are based on an inherent contradiction. He who waits for peace until the course of events has become stable is like the silly peasant by the river side, watching and waiting while the current flows forever and will ever flow.