The yellow book, an illustrated quarterly. Vol. 3, October, 1894
General
The yellow book, an illustrated quarterly. Vol. 3, October, 1894
English literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Great Britain -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
catechisms and categories--_Whence have we sago?_--plain substances
introduce me to swarms of men, before unrealised. And they all lived
and died, and cared for their children, or not, and led reasonable
lives, or not: and, without any alternative, had casual thoughts and
constant passions. Did each one of them ever stop in his work, and
think that the world revolved about him alone; and all was his, and for
him? Most men may have thought so, and shivered a little afterwards;
and worked on steadily. Or did each one of them ever think that he
was always beset with companions, hordes of men and women, necessary
and inevitable? Then, he must have struggled a little in his mind, as
a man fights for air, and worked on steadily. It does not do: this
interrogation of mysteries, which are also facts. Nor am I called upon,
from without or from within, to write an Essay upon the Problem of
Economic Distribution. _Præsentia temnis!_ Nature says to me: it is the
stir of the world, and the great play of forces, that I am wailing,
to no end. Let the great life continue, and the sun shine upon bright
palaces; and geraniums, red geraniums, glow at the windows of dingy
courts; death and sorrow come upon both, and upon me. And on all sides
there is infinite tenderness; the invincible good-will, which says kind
and cheerful things to every one sometimes, by a friend’s mouth; the
humane pieties of the world, which make glad the _Civitas Dei_, and
make endurable the _Regnum Hominis_. I need not make myself miserable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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