Page:The Other Life.djvu/236

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which are those of self and the world, to order, peace and useful employments, remaining, however, thoroughly unspiritual.

The possibility of utilizing the utter selfishness of the spirit for the public good, is apparent from the history of the human race. Men are quite willing, for the honors and high places of the world, for the delights and pleasures of sense, to control their evil passions so far as to display an outward civility and apparent good feeling for the neighbor. Splendid civilizations indeed may be built up, even churches may be made to flourish, with no basis of motive for the whole work but utter selfishness, intense ambition and the love of glory or power.

That acute and original thinker, Henry James, was evidently contemplating such an amelioration of the hells when he penned the following paragraph:

"I have not the slightest idea of hell as a transitory implication of human destiny, as an exhausted element of human progress. On the contrary, I conceive that the vital need of human freedom exacts its eternal perpetuity. I admit, nay I insist, that the devil is fast becoming and will one day be a perfect gentleman; that he will