The Will to Doubt Part 10

For this, our life of comedy and poetry, which is real only as it is both, no principle can come nearer to the very foundation of duty than just the principle, deeply true: _Whatever is, is right_. Men have laughed and men have wept over this truth. Was ever more perfect mingling of doubt and belief? Was ever greater jest? Or more tragic fact? But truth it is; _the_ truth of all duty; and it is life's eternal comedy--the alpha and the omega, too, of life's own poem.

[1] As a positive event in history, belonging to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Machiavellism was symptomatic of the great change of the period. Cherished inst.i.tutes, whether of politics or economics, of art or morals, of the spiritual life or the intellectual life, were becoming instruments. Thus, democracy was supplanting monarchy, Protestantism Catholicism, modern science scholasticism, etc.

[2] The late Professor C.C. Everett, of Harvard University.