We are slowly learning, too, to discern a deep inner content of life under conditions that have no appeal for us, and to see like ideals and aspirations under very diverse forms of expression. Take, for example, these three or four sentences--a small part of that quoted by Professor James in his essay, _On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings_,--from Stevenson's _Lantern-Bearers_: "It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid. It may be contended rather that a (somewhat minor) bard in almost every case survives, and is the spice of life to his possessor. Justice is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness of man's imagination. His life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud; there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it in which he dwells delighted."[63] And, later, on the side of ideals, Stevenson is quoted once again: "If I could show you these men and women all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging to some rag of honor, the poor jewel of their souls!"[64] And now, having quoted Howells and Stevenson as theological authorities, I shall be pardoned if, for a moment, I erect Kenneth Grahame's _Golden Age_ into a "theological institute": "See," said my friend, bearing somewhat on my shoulder, "how this strange thing, this love of ours, lives and shines out in the unlikeliest of places! You have been in the fields in early morning? Barren acres, all! But only stoop--catch the light thwartwise--and all is a silver network of gossamer! So the fairy filaments of this strange thing underrun and link together the whole world. Yet it is not the old imperious god of the fatal bow--+herôs hanikate machan+--not that--nor even the placid respectable +storgê+--but something still unnamed, perhaps more mysterious, more divine! Only one must stoop to see it, old fellow, one must stoop!"[65] It means very much for the sanity of our outlook on life, and for any possible theodicy, that we can believe the heart of such a view as this for which Stevenson and Grahame are here contending. And what is all this attempt to get away from this "certain blindness in human beings," of which Professor James speaks, but a growing into one of the fixed habits of Jesus, what Phillips Brooks calls "his discovery of interest in people whom the world generally would have found most uninteresting?" "And this same habit," he adds, "passing over into his disciples, made the wide and democratic character of the new faith."[66] IV. AS APPLIED TO THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY