which push us to it.  A fanaticism of this sort deforms and vulgarises the well-known work, in some respects so remarkable, of the late Mr. Buckle.  Such a fanaticism carries its own mark with it, in lacking sweetness; and its own penalty, in that, lacking sweetness, it comes in the end to lack light too.  And the Greeks,—­the great exponents of humanity’s bent for sweetness and light united, of its perception that the truth of things must be at the same time beauty,—­singularly escaped the fanaticism which we moderns, whether we Hellenise or whether we Hebraise, are so apt to show, and arrived,—­though failing, as has been said, to give adequate practical satisfaction to the claims of man’s moral side,—­at the idea of a comprehensive adjustment of the claims of both the sides in man, the moral as well [173] as the intellectual, of a full estimate of both, and of a reconciliation of both; an idea which is philosophically of the greatest value, and the best of lessons for us moderns.  So we ought to have no difficulty in conceding to Mr. Sidgwick that manful walking by the best light one has,—­fire and strength as he calls it,—­has its high value as well as culture, the endeavour to see things in their truth and beauty, the pursuit of sweetness and light.  But whether at this or that time, and to this or that set of persons, one ought to insist most on the praises of fire and strength, or on the praises of sweetness and light, must depend, one would think, on the circumstances and needs of that particular time and those particular persons.  And all that we have been saying, and indeed any glance at the world around us, shows that with us, with the most respectable and strongest part of us, the ruling force is now, and long has been, a Puritan force, the care for fire and strength, strictness of conscience, Hebraism, rather than the care for sweetness and light, spontaneity of consciousness, Hellenism.

Well, then, what is the good of our now rehearsing [174] the praises of fire and strength to ourselves, who dwell too exclusively on them already?  When Mr. Sidgwick says so broadly, that the world wants fire and strength even more than sweetness and light, is he not carried away by a turn for powerful generalisation? does he not forget that the world is not all of one piece, and every piece with the same needs at the same time?  It may be true that the Roman world at the beginning of our era, or Leo the Tenth’s Court at the time of the Reformation, or French society in the eighteenth century, needed fire and strength even more than sweetness and light.  But can it be said that the Barbarians who overran the empire, needed fire and strength even more than sweetness and light; or that the Puritans needed them more; or that Mr. Murphy, the Birmingham lecturer, and the Rev. W. Cattle and his friends, need them more?