If life
is a common-place and pleasant sort of business, there is nothing
particular to say or to think about it. But for all those--and they
are many--who feel that life misses, by some blind, inevitable
movement, being the gracious and beautiful thing it seems framed to
be, how can such as these hold their peace? And how, except by
facing it all, and looking patiently and bravely at it, can we find
a remedy for its sore sicknesses? That method has been used, and
used with success in every other kind of investigation, and we must
investigate life too, even if it turns out to be all a kind of
Mendelism, moved and swayed by absolutely fixed laws, which take no
account of what we sorrowfully desire.
Let us, then, gather up our threads a little. Let us first confront
the fact that, under present conditions, in the face of the mass of
records and books and accumulated traditions, arts and sciences
must make progress little by little, line by line, in skilled
technical hands. Fine achievement in every region becomes more
difficult every day, because there is so much that is finished and
perfected behind us; and if the conditions of our lives call us to
some strictly limited path, let us advance wisely and humbly, step
by step, without pride or vanity.
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