[AU] "In knowledge that man only is to be condemned who is not in a state of transition ... nor is there anything more adverse to accuracy than fixity of opinion" (_Faraday_).
The priest in Zola's _Rome_ looked forward to the day when symbols and rites, so necessary in the infancy of the world, would disappear altogether--"to the time when enlarged, purified, and instructed humanity would be able to support the brightness of naked truth" without their assistance.
It may be, however, that any premature abandonment of symbols, rites, and ceremonies might, under present conditions, prove disastrous, as such a course would go far to arrest artistic tendencies and stifle within us those cravings for the beautiful which are such undeniably potent and useful factors in conducting us onward to a realization of the invisible. All that appears requisite in this direction at the present moment is that the symbolic element in symbolism should be clearly recognized, and symbolism appraised at its true value.
Concurrently with the development of a deeper insight into the realities which subsist in symbols, there should arise in these Northern latitudes a class of people who would demonstrate by their character and actions that, under existing social conditions, and in all the turmoil of modern civilization, a nearer approach to the ideal life than has yet been made by a community is within the range of practicalities. This is the most clamant need of the day.
In our Western world we are confronted with innumerable obstacles in the way of leading the ideal, or Christ-like, life. The ideal _life-germ_ is in all of us, but too often hidden away under the veneer of respectability, and much obscured by conventionalities. This germ, if not very apparent in our public capacity, is distinctly discernible in the family life as typical of these islands. We see it in the eyes of the wife, in the restraint of the son, and we listen to it in the voices of our daughters. It struggles hard to develop itself in the face of stupendous difficulties. Its growth among our spiritual leaders is frequently handicapped by the isolating effects of aggrandizement. A cardinal, for instance--good and gracious as he invariably is--must always be more or less inaccessible and appalling. Our charities, too, are vitiated by ostentation. Prospectuses demand that a royalty should take the lead, and the titled figure as patrons, if the appeal made is designed to be irresistible. So that, to whichever side we turn, we find ourselves hampered in our aspirations towards the ideal by the exigencies of society, by our customs and absurdities.