Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/217

mine; but the “one undivided soul of many a soul,” “where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea,” shall enter upon a life of transcendent significance, upon a task of eternal duration, and of a meaning too high for us poor mortals of this present world well to comprehend. But this is no longer pure hedonism, although the verses hereabouts are so full of the joyous outbursts and of the anticipations of rapture. In fine, the outcome is no perfect and harmonious conception at all. We find the joy of the freed and loving, yet still separate selves, and the higher life of the all-pervading universal spirit, both alike glorified; and we never get from the poet any clearness about their actual relation. Is the world blessed just because the tyrant no longer interferes with each man’s flower-wreathing and other amusements? Or is the sole source of bliss the disposition of everybody to give everybody else everything? Or is the real source of the perfection this: that these souls, no longer oppressed by hatred, have at last come to feel not only their freedom, but also some higher aim of universal life? Shelley hints, but does not consistently make us feel, what his real result is. There was in fact always about Shelley that childish innocence of benevolent hope, to which the only evil seemed to be the hatred of men for one another, and the highest good the outburst of universal kindliness. Now that is the beginning of moral insight, but cannot be all of it. As if the benevolence would not turn out to be utter emptiness, unless there is something beyond it! As if there could be any value in this unity of life, unless there