Of all contrasts the most ironical and the most profound is the contrast between the Tag and the Truth of the Tag. A couple of lines are chosen by humanity from the work of a great poet, and are usually so chosen not only because they are beautiful, but because they are true. When they have been repeated a certain number of times they become a tag. A proverb or a mere popular statement puts into the shortest possible form some extremely simple, and perhaps extremely obvious, at any rate (this is quite certain) some extremely important, truth. Every one sees it is a truth, everybody repeats it, and it becomes a tag.

Now note the next phase in the life of the said tag. It is criticised and it is ridiculed; it becomes a solid butt for the archery of human wit. That phase lasts, perhaps, the lifetime of a man.

Now note the third phase, for it will teach you the most that can be learnt about mankind, and it is endless. It is the consummation of the tag and the test of humanity afforded by the tag. The tag is now taken for granted and is eternal, and the [Pg 46]following things happen to it: children are taught it like the alphabet; they are compelled to learn it. Hobbledehoys, great wits, and leaders of thought avoid it because it is commonplace. They can be seen waggling from one side of the road to the other in their grotesque efforts to avoid the tag. The whole world knows that the tag is there. Lastly—most wonderful of all!—the tag ceases to bite: it ceases to affect men; men are saturated with it. Men are acclimatised to it. They are vaccinated with it; and the tag has now arrived at the exercise of its eternal function, which is to wake in individuals, here in one man, there in another, an overwhelming sense of its truth (or beauty). It begins its career of converting individual men. Let it be mentioned where three are gathered together, and it will be fled from as an out-used thing, but two can make confidences each to the other about it, and one can feel it like a thorn or like a gem in his heart.

"Who goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing" has gone through all these phases; so has "Waste not want not." So has "For who to dull forgetfulness a prey," etc. So has "Felix qui potuit," etc. And so have the three or four thousand others that are the stock of a proper mind.

All these set me thinking of yet another tag, and as it is that which most sharply tests humility and, through humility, intelligence, and as, therefore, in this not very humble and not intelligent time it is grossly neglected, there is a pleasure in dwelling[Pg 47] upon it. It is to this effect: "The future is veiled from man."

Good Lord! To read the Press and to hear the speeches! Why, one would think that the future had a map to it! One can hardly hear one's self think for prophecies; and, what is perhaps the most terrible thing of all, as a symptom of our modern state of mind, the prophecies have a dogmatic quality (using the word "dogmatic" as it is popularly used of transcendental affirmations), for men prophesy in great herds and all together, and to question their prophecies, simply to say that possibly "the future is veiled from man," creates something now-a-days of the astonishment, ridicule, or anger which the denial of a religious dogma does in a society with a fixed religion. Thus, men in England to-day confidently regard the future of the earth for, let us say, the next hundred years in a certain light. Certain countries (especially new countries) are to increase in a regular manner in value and population and property. Certain other countries are to continue their decline. Certain forms of mechanical perfection are to increase, certain speculations as to the nature of the soul are to decline in interest. But more than any particular set of opinions, there is a general colour stamped upon the future in the modern mind, and how securely it is stamped one can best prove by the amusement or surprise that is caused if one suggests (but does not affirm) that there may be (not that there must be) some totally[Pg 48] new philosophy, new religion, or new development within three generations.

A book recently published suggests to me the permanent and ironical value of that old tag "The future is veiled from man." It is a study of two somewhat obscure individuals who were members of the Revolutionary Tribunal. It is a very detailed study in which one feels in every page the things that were taken for granted in that place and time—in the Paris of the Revolution. What of all that has come to pass? What of all the fixed certitudes as to the future—nay, the fixed certitudes upon the very nature of man from which, as of necessity, the future was deduced, has remained? The author has done all the better in his study of Vilate and Trinchard from the fact that his position in the Archives has permitted him to look into the ultimate details of the period. But not so much the high historical value of the work as its permanent human lesson strikes me as I read.

Vilate was twenty-four when the great war of the Revolution against the Kings was within a month of breaking out, and when he set out for Paris from the lovely rocky pasturage of his province, up beyond Limoges. And this was what he had in his mind: that the revolutionary movement, to use his own words, "must give to the whole world a spur of insurrection against the oppressors of men." This pathetic certitude was nothing peculiar to the very commonplace young fellow who was leaving his [Pg 49]professorship in the Indre for Paris. To him they then seemed as much a commonplace as would seem to some young fellow in a similar position to-day in Birmingham some phase about the development of the West of Canada, or some certain prophecy that nations would enrich themselves in proportion to the amount of coal and iron discovered upon their territories.

When Vilate hears a speech in the Revolutionary Parliament he says: "Truth has now appeared and is fixed for ever. It can now call to its tribunal every abuse, every vice, and ............