whole universe, not to speculate whether the Cosmos, as we can imagine it from the part of it within the cognisance of man, offers a spectacle of moral or immoral or of non-moral significance.  In the old times of Greece and in the modern world many have been devoid of the taste for argument on such subjects.  Those who are uninterested in these abstract discussions are rarely in opposition to the mode of faith surrounding them, as to reject the doctrines held by the majority of one’s friends and associates implies either a disagreeable disposition or an unusual interest in ultimate problems; they are usually orthodox according to their environment—­Stoics, Epicureans, Jews, Episcopalians, Catholics, Quakers, Methodists, Mormons, Mohammedans, Buddhists, or whatever may be the prevailing dogma around them.  The attitude of indifference to moral philosophy has practically no relation to what may be considered good or bad moral conduct; those characterised by it live above or below or round about their own moral standards in a fashion as variable as that of moral philosophers.  Many of the saints, ancient and modern, have been notorious instances; question them as to their faith or as to the logical foundation of their renunciations and they will tell you in simple honesty or make it plain by their answers that they have no head for logic, that they cannot argue, but only know and feel their position to be true.  In addition to the saints, many of the best and most of the pleasant people in the world are of this type.

The type strongly in contrast with the foregoing is found in persons of a more strenuous, perhaps more admirable but less agreeable character.  The savour of acerbity may be a natural attribute of the critical character, and it is certainly not lessened where moral philosophy is the subject-matter of the criticism.  The continual search after solutions of problems that may be insoluble at least makes the seekers excellent judges of wrong solutions.  Like Luther and Loyola and Kant, they may be able to satisfy themselves, or, like Huxley, they may remain in doubt, but in either case they are excellent critics of the solutions of others.  They are the firebrands of faith or of negation; they are possessed by an intellectual fury that will not let them cease from propagandising.  They must go through the world as missionaries; and the missionary spirit is dual, one side zealous to proclaim the new, the other equally zealous to denounce the old.  But theirs is the great work, “to burn old falsehood bare,” to tear away the incrustations of time which people have come to accept as the thing itself, and in their track new and lively truth springs up, as fresh green follows the devastations of fire.