by a vast mass of human tradition, which he is compelled
to treat more or less as divine revelation. The
whole religious position has been metamorphosed by
scientific discovery; and what theologian or philosopher
has ever come near to solving the incompatibility
of the apparent inflexibility of natural law with
the no less apparent liberty of moral choice?
Theologians and philosophers may, if they choose,
attempt to crush the speculations of an experimentalist
in life, though I think they would be better employed
in welcoming them as an instance of how theological
and metaphysical conceptions strike upon the ordinary
mind; but they shall not prevent one who, like myself,
has observed life closely under aspects which the
technical student has had no opportunity of observing
it, from making my comment upon what I see. It
is possible that such comments may appeal to ordinary
people with even more force than technical considerations
are likely to appeal. We have all to sin and
to suffer, to enjoy and to fear; we find our instinct
at variance with our reason and our moral sense alike.
We have in our souls conceptions of justice, truth,
purity, generosity, and we find the natural law, which
we would fain believe is the law of God, constantly
thwarting and even insulting these conceptions; and
yet these conceptions are as real and vivid to us
as the law which takes no account of them. We
find theologians basing their faith on documents which
every day appear to be less and less historical, and
on deductions drawn from these documents by men who
believed them to be historical. I have the utmost
sympathy with the position in which theologians find
themselves; but they have mostly their own prudence
to thank for it; they are so cautious about sifting
the chaff from the grain, that they will not throw
away the chaff for fear of casting away a single grain.
They are so averse to unsettling the faith of the
weak, that the vitality has ebbed away from the faith
of the strong; they have clung so hard to tradition,
that they have obscured fact; they would confine the
limbs of manhood in the garb of childhood; and thus
they have forfeited the confidence of intelligent
men, and ranged themselves with the credulous, the
comfortable, and the unenterprising. Intolerant
persecution is out of date, and the question will be
solved by the stranding of the theological hull, owing
to the quiet withdrawal of the vital tide.
XXXIII
My way this afternoon lay through a succession of old hamlets, one closely bordering on another, that lie all along the base of the wold. I have no doubt that the reason for their position is simply that it is just along the base of the hills that the springs break out, and a village near a perennial and pure spring generally represents a very old human settlement indeed. Sometimes the wold drew near the road, sometimes lay more remote; its pale fallows, its faintly-tinted pastures, seemed to lie very quietly