Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/362

individual man or woman is the mere copy in miniature of the Soul of a race, or the Soul of a world. An involuntary, half-conscious, but nevertheless resistless impetus towards ultimate Good is the Soul's original quality and inborn Ideal. For, if the human weakness of the fleshly creature impel it towards temporary phases of evil, sooner or later the Soul will set to work to pull it out of the stifling quagmire. Material Nature is, as we all know, a remedial agent, and wherever mischief is wrought she seeks to amend it. Spiritual Nature is a still stronger healer. For every injury self-inflicted or wrought by others on the immortal Soul she has a saving balm,—and for every inch of progress which the Soul essays to make along the lines leading to good, she helps it forward a mile. Individuals find this out very soon in their own personal experience,—Nations discover it more slowly, first, because they have a longer time to live and learn than the individual unit,—and secondly because, moving in great masses, their periods of transit from one epoch of civilization to another must necessarily be more laborious and difficult. But in all epochs, in all eras, the Soul wins. The fiery leaven which is of God, works through the lump in various strange and complex forms till the whole is leavened. And those nations in which the Soul, or Spirit of the Ideal, is crushed and kept down by the iron hand of Materialism, are very soon seen to fall back in the rear of progress,—so far back indeed that we are fain to speak of them as "decaying nations," though of a truth no decay is possible to them, but only temporary retrogression, which will in