that ever has been among
men, or ever will be." And he goes into practicality. He practically
distinguishes the kinds of religion that are in the world, and he
makes out three reverences. The boys are all trained to go through
certain gesticulations, to lay their hands on their breast and look
up to heaven, and they give their three reverences. The first and
simplest is that of reverence for what is above us. It is the soul
of all the Pagan religions; there is nothing better in man than that.
Then there is reverence for what is around us or about us--reverence
for our equals, and to which he attributes an immense power in the
culture of man. The third is reverence for what is beneath us--to
learn to recognise in pain, sorrow, and contradiction, even in those
things, odious as they are to flesh and blood--to learn that there
lies in these a priceless blessing. And he defines that as being
the soul of the Christian religion--the highest of all religions; a
height, as Goethe says--and that is very true, even to the letter, as
I consider--a height to which the human species was fated and enabled
to attain, and from which, having once attained it, it can never
retrograde. It cannot descend down below that permanently, Goethe's
idea is.

Often one thinks it was good to have a faith of that kind--that
always, even in the most degraded, sunken, and unbelieving times, he
calculates there will be found some few souls who will recognise what
that meant; and that the world, having once received it, there is no
fear of its retrograding. He goes on then to tell us the way in which
they seek to teach boys, in the sciences particularly, whatever the
boy is fit for. Wilhelm left his own boy there, expecting they would
make him a Master of Arts, or something of that kind; and when he came
back for him he saw a thundering cloud of dust coming over the plain,
of which he could make nothing. It turned out to be a tempest of wild
horses, managed by young lads who had a turn for hunting with their
grooms. His own son was among them, and he found that the breaking of
colts was the thing he was most suited for. (Laughter.) This is
what Goethe calls Art, which I should not make clear to you by any
definition unless it is clear already. (A laugh.) I would not attempt
to define it as music, painting, and poetry, and so on; it is in quite
a higher sense than the common one, and in which, I am afraid, most of
our painters, poets, and music men woul