"There are new solutions for him, if the old have fallen dumb. If he no longer believe death to be a stroke from the sword of God's justice, but the leaden footfall of an inflexible law of matter, the humility of his awe is deepened, and the tenderness of his pity made holier, that creatures who can love so much should have their days so shut round with a wall of darkness. The purifying anguish of remorse will be stronger, not weaker, when he has trained himself to look upon every wrong in thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the inner spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting for its own guidance and advantage, less as a breach of the decrees of an unseen tribunal than as an ungrateful infection weakening and corrupting the future of his brothers."
But there are wider questions than the immediate problems of conduct. A certain type of mind finds it almost impossible not to attempt ethical judgments on the whole universe, not to speculate whether the Cosmos, as we can imagine it from the part of it within the cognisance of man, offers a spectacle of moral or immoral or of non-moral significance. In the old times of Greece and in the modern world many have been devoid of the taste for argument on such subjects. Those who are uninterested in these abstract discussions are rarely in opposition to the mode of faith surrounding them, as to reject the doctrines held by the majority of one's friends and associates implies either a disagreeable disposition or an unusual interest in ultimate problems; they are usually orthodox according to their environment--Stoics, Epicureans, Jews, Episcopalians, Catholics, Quakers, Methodists, Mormons, Mohammedans, Buddhists, or whatever may be the prevailing dogma around them. The attitude of indifference to moral philosophy has practically no relation to what may be considered good or bad moral conduct; those characterised by it live above or below or round about their own moral standards in a fashion as variable as that of moral philosophers. Many of the saints, ancient and modern, have been notorious instances; question them as to their faith or as to the logical foundation of their renunciations and they will tell you in simple honesty or make it plain by their answers that they have no head for logic, that they cannot argue, but only know and feel their position to be true. In addition to the saints, many of the best and most of the pleasant people in the world are of this type.