Matter will know
itself no longer. 'Imperishable monuments' and 'immortal deeds,'
death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they
had never been. Nor will anything that is, be better or be worse for
all that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have
striven through countless generations to effect." [Footnote: The
Foundations of Belief, p. 30.]
That is the sting of it, that in the vast driftings of the cosmic
weather, tho many a jeweled shore appears, and many an enchanted
cloud-bank floats away, long lingering ere it be dissolved--even as
our world now lingers, for our joy-yet when these transient products
are gone, nothing, absolutely NOTHING remains, of represent those
particular qualities, those elements of preciousness which they may
have enshrined. Dead and gone are they, gone utterly from the very
sphere and room of being. Without an echo; without a memory; without
an influence on aught that may come after, to make it care for
similar ideals. This utter final wreck and tragedy is of the essence
of scientific materialism as at present understood. The lower and
not the higher forces are the eternal forces, or the last surviving
forces within the only cycle of evolution which we can definitely
see.
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