I repeat, we never had so many good reasons for hope. Let us cherish
them. Our predecessors were sustained by slighter reasons when they did
the great things that have remained for us the best evidence of the
destinies of mankind. They had confidence when they found none but
unreasonable reasons for having it. To-day, when some of those reasons
really spring from reason, it would be wrong to show less courage than
did those who derived theirs from the very circumstances whence we
derive only our discouragements.
We no longer believe that this world is as the apple of the eye of one
God who is alive to our slightest thoughts; but we know that it is
subjected to forces quite as powerful, quite as alive to laws and duties
which it behoves us to penetrate. That is why our attitude in the face
of the mystery of these forces has changed. It is no longer one of fear,
but one of boldness. It no longer demands that the slave shall kneel
before the master or the creator, but permits a gaze as between equals,
for we bear within ourselves the equal of the deepest and greatest
mysteries.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Double Garden, by Maurice Maeterlinck
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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