100 ESSAYS AND LEITERS
or a new faith chan^ire the direction in wliich humanity is travelling — that faith would need a now soil which would allow it to ^'crniinate and grow : for there can be no new society without a new soil. Faith di>e3 not rise from the dead, and one can make nothing but mythologies out of dead religions, Tlierefore the coming century will but con- tinue our own in the democratic and scientific rush forward which has swcjit us along, and which still continues. Wiiat 1 can concede is, that in literature we limited our horizon too much. Personally, I have already regretted that I wajj u sectarian, in that I wished art to confine itself to proven verities. Later comers have extendcil the horizon by recon ijuering the region of the unknown and the mysterious ; and they have done well. Between the truths fixed by science, which are henceforth immovable, and the truths Science will to-morrow seize from the region of the unknown to fix in their turn, there lies an undefined borderland of doubt and incjuiry, which, it seems to ne, belongs to literature as nmch as to science. It is there we may go as pioneers, doing «ur work as forerunners, and interpreting according to our characters and minds the action of unknown forces. The ideal — what is it but the unexplained : those forces of the infinite world in which we are plunged without knowing them ? But if it be permissible to invent solutions of what is unknown, dare we, therefore, call in question a.scertained laws, imagining them other than they are, and thereby denying them ? As science advances it is certain that the ideal recedes : and it seems to mo that the only meaning of life, the only joy we ought to attribute to life, lies in this gradual conquest, even if one has the melancholy assurance that we never shall know everything.
In the unquiet times in which we live, gentlemen, — in our day so satiated and so irresolute — shepherds of the soul have arisen who are troubled in mind and ardently ofi'er a faith to the rising generation. The offer is generous, but, unfor- tunately, the faith changes and deteriorates according to ihe ])ersonality of the prophet who supplies it. There are several kinds, but none of them appear to me to be very clear, or very well defined.
You are asked to believe, but are not told precisely in what you should believe. Perhaps it cannot be told, or ^)erhaps they dare not tell it.
You are to believe for the pleasure of believing, and,
