As societies develop, thought for the future becomes more and more a factor in their growth and an inspiration to their labours. From the blind improvidence of the savage, who only sees in it that time which shall bring him to the setting of the day’s sun and conceives not how his lot in other days may be determined by his present action, up to our anxious preoccupation with the future and provision for our posterity, there is an immense distance; yet even this may seem little enough some day. We are only capable of progress in so far as we can adapt our actions every day to the conditions of a more distant future, to countries farther and farther away. Assurance of our part in bringing about a work which shall survive us, fruitful in times to come, exalts our human dignity and gives us triumph even over the limitations of our nature. If unhappily humanity had to despair definitely of the immortality of the individual consciousness, the most religious sentiment that it could substitute would be that which comes of the thought that even after our dissolution into the heart of things there would outlast, as part of all human inheritance, the very best of all that we had felt or thought, our deepest and our purest essence—just as the beams of a long-extinguished star go on indefinitely and still cheer us mortals, albeit with a melancholy light.

The future is, in the life of human societies, the one inspiring thought. From pious veneration of the past and the cult of tradition, on the one hand, and, on the other, a daring impulse toward the future, comes the noble force which, uplifting the common thought above the present limitations, imparts to its collective agitations and sentiments a sense for some ideal. Men and peoples work under the inspiration of ideas, as the beasts by instinct; and that society which labours and struggles, even unconsciously, to impose an idea upon actualities, acts as does the bird who, building its nest at the prompting of some inner imagination, obeys at once an unconscious memory of the past and a mysterious presentiment of the future.

A preoccupation for the ulterior destiny of our life, by eliminating any suggestion of self-interest, purifies and tranquillizes it and also ennobles; and it is a proud honour of this century that the impelling force of this thought for the future, this sense of what is due the dignity of a rational being, should have shown itself so clearly. Even in the depths of the most utter pessimism, in the bosom of that bitter metaphysic which brought from the East the love of dissolution and nonentity, even Hartmann, the apostle for the return to the Unconscious, has preached, and with some appearance of logic, the austere duty of going on with the work of improvement, labouring for the good of the future, so that human effort, aiding evolution, may bring about a more rapid impulse to the final end — which is the termination of all sorrow, and likewise of all life.

But not, as did Hartmann, in the name of death, but in that of life and hope do I ask of you a portion of your soul for the labour for the future; and it is to ask this of you that I have sought inspiration in the gentle and lovely image of my Ariel. The bountiful Spirit whom Shakespeare hit upon to clothe with so high a symbolism, perhaps with that divine unconsciousness of all it meant which is common to great geniuses, shows clearly, even in this statuette, its ideal significance, admirably expressed in the sculptor’s lines. Ariel is reason, and the higher truth. Ariel is that sublime sentiment of the perfectibility of man through whose virtue human clay is magnified and transformed in the realm of things for each one who lives by his light — even that miserable clay of which Ahriman spoke to Manfred... Ariel is, to nature, that crowning of its work which ends the ascending process of organic life with the call of the spirit. Ariel triumphant signifies ideality and order in life, noble inspiration in thought, unselfishness in conduct, high taste in art, heroism of action, delicacy and refinement in manners and usages. He is the eponymous hero in the épopée of man, the immortal protagonist, since first his presence inspired the feeble struggles of reason in primitive man, when he first knitted his brow in the effort to shape the flint, or to scratch rude drawings on a reindeer’s bones; since first with his arms he fanned the sacred fire which the ancient Aryan, progenitor of the peoples we call civilized, lit, by what mystery we know not, on the banks of the Ganges, and forged from the divine flame the sceptre of man’s mastery. Ariel accompanies him still, and onward, breeding races ever higher, until at the end he hovers radiant above those souls which have over-passed the natural limit of humanity; the same for Plato on the Sunium Promontory as for Francis of Assisi on the solitude of the Albem Mont. His invincible power has as its impulse every uplifting moment of a human life. Though overcome a thousand and one times by the untamable rebellion of Caliban, proscribed by the victorious barbarian, smothered in the clouds of battle, his bright wings spotted by trailing in “the eternal dunghill of Job,” Ariel ever rises again, immortally renews his beauty and his youth. Ariel runs nimbly as at the call of Prospero to all who really care for him and seek to find him. His kindly power goes even out at times to those who would deny him. He guides the blind forces of evil and ignorance often to aid, and unwittingly, in works of good. He crosses human history with a song, as in the “Tempest,’’ to inspire those who labour and those who fight until he brings about the fulfilment of that divine plan to them unknown — and he is permitted, as in Shakespeare’s play, to snap his bonds in twain and soar forever into his circle of diviner light.

And more than for these words of mine I would have you ever remember tenderly this little figure of Ariel. I would that the image, light and graceful, of this bronze, impress itself upon your inmost spirit.... Once I saw, in a museum, an old coin; worn and effaced I could still read its device, in the thin gold, the one word Esperanza. I pondered on the influence that simple inscription might have had on the many generations through whose hands the coin had passed; how many fainting spirits it had cheered, how many generous impulses it had fostered, how many desperate resolutions it had prevented. So may the figure of this bronze, graven in your hearts, fulfil in your lives this invisible yet determining part In dark hours of discouragement may it rekindle in your conscience the warmth of the ideal, return to your hearts the glow of a perishing hope. And Ariel, first enthroned behind the bastion of your inner life, may sally thence to the attack and conquering of other souls. I see the bright spirit smiling back upon you in future times, even though your own still works in shadow. I have faith in your will and in your strength, even more in those to whom you shall transfer your life, transmit your work. I dream in rapture of that day when realities shall convince the world that the Cordillera which soars above the continent of the Americas has been carved to be the pedestal of this statue, the altar of the cult of Ariel.

So spoke Prospero. The youths departed, after a filial grasping of the Master’s hand. Of his sweet words there lingered an echo in each one’s mind as when a finger is drawn across a musical glass. It was the last hour of eve.