in fact, should good, well-meaning, energetic, sensible
people, like the bulk of our countrymen, come to have
such light belief in right reason, and such an exaggerated
value for their own independent doing, however crude?
The answer is: because of an exclusive and excessive
development in them, without due allowance for time,
place, and circumstance, of that side of human nature,
and that group of human forces, to which we have given
the general name of Hebraism. Because they have
thought their real and only important homage was owed
to a power concerned with their obedience rather than
with their intelligence, a power interested in the
moral side of their nature almost exclusively.
Thus they have [168] been led to regard in themselves,
as the one thing needful, strictness of conscience,
the staunch adherence to some fixed law of doing we
have got already, instead of spontaneity of consciousness,
which tends continually to enlarge our whole law of
doing. They have fancied themselves to have in
their religion a sufficient basis for the whole of
their life fixed and certain for ever, a full law
of conduct and a full law of thought, so far as thought
is needed, as well; whereas what they really have is
a law of conduct, a law of unexampled power for enabling
them to war against the law of sin in their members
and not to serve it in the lusts thereof. The
book which contains this invaluable law they call
the Word of God, and attribute to it, as I have said,
and as, indeed, is perfectly well known, a reach and
sufficiency co-extensive with all the wants of human
nature. This might, no doubt, be so, if humanity
were not the composite thing it is, if it had only,
or in quite overpowering eminence, a moral side, and
the group of instincts and powers which we call moral.
But it has besides, and in notable eminence, an intellectual
side, and the group of instincts and powers which
we call intellectual. No doubt, mankind makes
in general its progress in a [169] fashion which gives
at one time full swing to one of these groups of instincts,
at another time to the other; and man’s faculties
are so intertwined, that when his moral side, and the
current of force which we call Hebraism, is uppermost,
this side will manage somehow to provide, or appear
to provide, satisfaction for his intellectual needs;
and when his moral side, and the current of force
which we call Hellenism, is uppermost, this, again,
will provide, or appear to provide, satisfaction for
men’s moral needs. But sooner or later
it becomes manifest that when the two sides of humanity
proceed in this fashion of alternate preponderance,
and not of mutual understanding and balance, the side
which is uppermost does not really provide in a satisfactory
manner for the needs of the side which is undermost,
and a state of confusion is, sooner or later, the
result. The Hellenic half of our nature, bearing
rule, makes a sort of provision for the Hebrew half,
but it turns out to be an inadequate provision; and