It is simply an expression of the reluctance of the
human being to use the awful word "never." As the years take from us,
one by one, all that we have loved, we try to avert our gaze; we are
fain to believe that in some phantom world all will be given back to us,
and that our toys have only been laid by in the nursery upstairs. Who,
indeed, can deny that to give up these dreams involves a cruel pang?
But, then, who but the most determined optimist can deny that a cruel
pang is inevitable? Is not the promise too shadowy to give us real
satisfaction? The whole lesson of our lives is summed up in teaching us
to say "never" without needless flinching, or, in other words, in
submitting to the inevitable. The theologian bids us repent, and waste
our lives in vain regrets for the past, and in tremulous hopes that the
past may yet be the future. Science tells us--what, indeed, we scarcely
need to learn from science--that what is gone, is gone, and that the
best wisdom of life is the acceptance of accomplished facts.
"The moving Finger writes, and having writ,
Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit
Can lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wipe out a word of it.
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