These, these are the eternal things--that persist in every age, in every environment, in old Etruscan villages as in the Paris of to-day: these are the realities to which "the latest scientific conveniences" are but padding, and in which we have had no superiority over our ancestors, even as we shall have no inferiority to our successors, though they riot in "Vril" and balloons, and go on Cooks' Tours to the constellations. The network of nerves in which we live and move and have our being is only capable of a certain quota of sensations, and no invention will really enlarge our enjoyments except it be of a new set of nerves. Persons whose lives have known strange vicissitudes have been astonished to find pleasure and pain about equally distributed in all; and I am optimist enough to think that no age will be really less unhappy than the present. Reformers who imagine they improve on the past age do but alter old institutions to fit new feelings. Reformers are necessary because otherwise the new feelings would be cramped by the old institutions. But there is no addition to the sum of pleasure. Progress really means not lagging behind; and however far we march, the same sunshine will throw the same shadow of pain across our path. The notion of progress, said Spinoza, is a futility, because God, of whom the universe is a manifestation, is always perfect. Later philosophers have found this doctrine a barren blind-alley, and craved for the notion of a more energising God. But both notions seem perfectly compatible. Progress may be just the way perfection manifests itself. The universe moves--and at each point is perfect. It is as good as it could be--at the moment: it could not be any better. For if it could have been, it would have been: it has no interest in being otherwise. That it is not perfect in our sense of the word matters little to the metaphysician. We have such limited experiences of universes that we cannot judge what a really good one should be like; and to say that ours is bad is to foul our own nest.