Selfish passion perishes, grovelling and hopeless;

Instinct sleeps, in order to a loftier waking; and

Idealism learns, as its ultimate lesson, that self-sacrifice is true redemption; that the region beyond the grave is the fitting one for exemption from mortal conditions; and that Death is the everlasting portal, indicated by the finger of God,—­the broad avenue through which man does not issue solitary and stealthy into the region of Free Existence, but enters triumphant, hailed by a hierarchy of immortal natures.

The result is (in other words), that the universal human lot is, after
all, that of the highest privilege.