There is a conscious solidarity of the universe towards the intuition of which we must struggle, that it may become to us, not a logical abstraction, but a felt and living fact. As individuals we shall never be complete. The completest man lacks the completion of the rest of the universe. Part, then, with the feeling of the externality to the universe, which , coupled with the sense of utter ignorance and powerlessness, is so full of despair. Believe that your sympathy with infinite being, infinite extension, infinite variety, is a pledge of identity. Above all, disabuse your mind of the notion that this life is essentially incomplete and preliminary in its nature and destined to issue in some final state. For this notion there is no warrant in reason nor in proper interpretation of intuitions. Time is not a vestibule of eternity, but a part of it. We are now living our immortal lives. The present life is its own perfect consummation, its own reason and excuse. The life of infinite range that our intuitions promise us lives even now open round about us. The avenues leading to it, the vistas opening upon it, are those universal instincts that continually stir us, and which if followed out would lead us thither. It is our own dull lack of faith that causes us to regard them as of no present but only of future significance, that places our heaven ever in some dim land of tomorrow, instead of all about us in the eternal present.
- – Edward Bellamy