not impossible that some of the present race of men may live to see them in part accomplished. But, besides this, there will be no disease, no anguish, no melancholy, and no resentment. Every man will seek with ineffable ardour the good of all' (ii. 870-72). A very curious vein, not golden indeed but copper, let us say, is hidden away in the earthy mass of Godwin. The dull, heavyfeatured creature sees an apocalyptic vision and becomes poetical. It is partly absurd, but not because it is ideal, and there are lineaments in it of the true Utopia. Godwin probably would have denounced the Revelation of St. John the Divine as superstitious nonsense, but he saw before him a kind of misty, distorted reflection of the New Jerusalem, in which there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, where there shall be no more curse, no night, no candle, no light of the sun. It might have been thought that it was impossible to establish a connection between Patmos and Skinner Street, but the first postulate of Euclid's elements holds good universally, 'that a straight line may be drawn from any one point to any other point.' NOTES Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim NOTHING is more dangerous than a mass of discontent which does not know what remedy is to be sought. All sorts of cures will be tried, many of them mere quackery, and their failure will make matters worse. Whatever may be the meaning of the process of the world, however disheartening some steps in its evolution may be, they are necessary, and without them, perhaps, some evil could not thoroughly have been worked out. People often manifest a diseased desire to express their will. A theory is adopted, not because the facts force it upon them, but because its adoption shows their power. The larger, the freer the nature, the less there is of this action of the will, the more the mind is led. A mere dream, a vague hope may be more potent than certainty in a lesser matter. The faintest vision of God is more determinative of life than a gross earthly certainty. The more nearly the performer on a musical instrument approaches perfection, the larger is that part of his execution which is unconscious. Consciousness arises with defect, or sense of something to be overcome. How conscious we are when striving to think and work in ill-health ! The highest education is that which teaches us to guide ourselves by motives which are intangible, remote, incapable of direct and material appreciation. Weak minds find confirmation of their beliefs in the discovery of the same beliefs in other people. They do not take the trouble to find out how their neighbours obtained these beliefs. If they are current at the time, the probability is that the coincidence is worthless as any evidence of validity. The certainty which comes of intelligent conviction is a tempered certainty. Its possessor knows the difficulty of the path by which he has reached it, and the reasons which on his way have appeared so potent against it. Fanaticism is the accompaniment of conclusions which are not the result of reason. To understand a thing is to understand all its laws. The thing is then nothing but law, and mere matter seems to disappear. What is it which governs the selection of truths which make up religions? Why are this and that chosen ? Has not the selection a damaging effect upon the great body of truth? Every action should be an end in itself as well as a means. The end of getting up in the morning, as Goethe says, is getting up. We are always searching for something extraordinary which shall give life its pleasure and value. The extraordinary must be contributed by our own minds and feelings. The real object in any human being of my love and worship is that which is not in any table of virtues, nor can I in any way describe it it is something which petually escapes, which is not to be found in anything said or done. It is a common mistake to demand a definition of that which can have none. We loosely cover a mass of phenomena which are diverse with a single word. For example, we puzzle over a definition of life, but there is no such thing as life in the sense of a single, distinct entity. Religion has done harm by assigning an artificial urgency to insoluble problems. We are all told that we must be certain on matters concerning which the wisest man is ignorant. When we begin to reflect and to doubt, the urgency unhappily remains and we are distressed. I know a man who had to encounter three successive trials of all the courage and inventive faculty in him. If he had failed in one he would have been ruined. The odds were desperate against him in each, and against ultimate victory were overwhelming. Nevertheless he made the attempt |