But we are no longer concerned with the personal and immediate
interests that guide nearly all the actions of everyday life. A
loftier ideal has visited men's minds and occupies them wholly; and
the least prepared, the humblest, the minds that seemed to understand
hardly anything of the existence that came before the tremendous
trial, now feel it and live it as thoroughly and with the same
infinite ampleness as do those minds which thought themselves alone
capable of grasping it, of considering it from above or contemplating
it from every side. Never did a sheer ideal sink so deeply into so
many hearts or abide there for so long without wavering or faltering.
And therefore, beyond a doubt, somewhere on high, in the heart of the
unknown powers that rule us, there is being piled up at this moment
the most wonderful treasure of immaterial forces that man has ever
possessed, one upon which he will draw until the end of time; for in
that superhuman treasure-house nothing is lost and we are still living
day by day on the virtues stored in it long centuries ago by the
heroes of Greece and Rome, by the saints and martyrs of the primitive
Church and by the flower of mediæval chivalry.

* * * * *




THE HOUR OF DESTINY




XI