"A mirage," you say, being a cynical person--"a mirage just to keep us
going through the desert--a sort of carrot held before the nose of that
donkey, man." Well, looking at the world to-day, it does rather seem that,
if harmony is the main concern of the adventure, humanity had better give
up the enterprise. In the light of the events in which we live, man is not
merely the most discordant creature on earth: he is also the most ferocious
animal that exists. Dryden's famous lines read like a satire:--
From harmony, from heavenly harmony.
This universal frame began;
From harmony to harmony, through all the compass of the
notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in man.
If Dryden could see Europe to-day he might at least find one flaw in that
ode of which he had so exalted an opinion.
But the story of man is a long story, and we cannot see its drift from any
episode, however vast and catastrophic. We are still only in the turbulent
childhood of our career, and frightful as our excesses are, there is a
motive behind them that makes them profoundly different from the wars of
old.
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