ask a lesser question, is it impossible to make a
guess as to the direction in which our goal lies?




III


This question, born of sadness and weariness,
which seems to us essentially part of the
spirit of the nineteenth century, is in fact a
question which must have been asked all
through the ages. Could we go back throughout
history intelligently, no doubt we should
find that it came always with the hour when
the flower of civilization had blown to its
full, and when its petals were but slackly held
together. The natural part of man has
reached then its utmost height; he has rolled
the stone up the Hill of Difficulty only to watch
it roll back again when the summit is reached,--as
in Egypt, in Rome, in Greece. Why this
useless labor? Is it not enough to produce a
weariness and sickness unutterable, to be forever
accomplishing a task only to see it undone
again? Yet that is what man has done throughout
history, so far as our limited knowledge
reaches. There is one summit to which, by
immense and united efforts, he attains, where