So powerful is it as
to banish for the time all care, and to make this life seem the life of
the immortals.
Returning the next morning, my thoughts went on, and found that this
ideal of nature required of us something beyond good. The conception of
moral good did not satisfy one while contemplating it. The highest form
known to us at present is pure unselfishness, the doing of good, not for
any reward, now or hereafter, nor for the completion of an imaginary
scheme. This is the best we know. But how unsatisfactory! Filled with the
aspirations called forth by the ideal before me, it appeared as if even
the saving of life is a little work compared to what the heart would like
to do. An outlet is needed more fully satisfying to its inmost desires
than is afforded by any labour of self-abnegation. It must be something
in accord with the perception of beauty and of an ideal. Personal virtue
is not enough. The works called good are dry and jejune, soon
consummated, often of questionable value, and leaving behind them when
finished a sense of vacuity. You give a sum of money to a good object and
walk away, but it does not satisfy the craving of the heart. You deny
yourself pleasure to sit by the bedside of an invalid--a good deed; but
when it is done there remains an emptiness of the soul. It is not
enough--it is casuistry to say that it is. I often think the reason the
world is so cold and selfish, so stolid and indifferent, is because it
has never yet been shown how to be anything else.
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