ar with it, if we fail to grasp the
point of view from which it's written, there's little hope for us. Go
away from all this and get straightened out, make yourself acquainted
with the modern trend in literature and criticism, with modern history,
find out what's being done in the field of education, read the modern
sciences, especially biology, and psychology and sociology, and try to
get a glimpse of the fundamental human needs underlying such phenomena
as the labour and woman's movements. God knows I've just begun to get
my glimpse, and I've floundered around ever since I left college.... I
don't mean to say we can ever see the whole, but we can get a clew, an
idea, and pass it on to our children. You have children, haven't you?"

"Yes," I said....

He said nothing--he seemed to be looking out of the window.

"Then the scientific point of view in your opinion hasn't done away with
religion?" I asked presently.

"The scientific point of view is the religious point of view," he said
earnestly, "because it's the only self-respecting point of view. I can't
believe that God intended to make a creature who would not ultimately
weigh his beliefs with his reason instead of accepting them blindly.
That's immoral, if you like--especially in these days."

"And are there, then, no 'over-beliefs'?" I said, remembering the
expression in something I had read.

"That seems to me a relic of the method of ancient science, which was
upside down,--a mere confusion with faith. Faith and belief are two
different things; faith is the emotion, the steam, if you like, that
drives us on in our search for truth. Theories, at a stretch, might
be identified with 'over-beliefs' but when it comes to confusing our
theories with facts, instead of recognizing them as theories, when
it comes to living by 'over-beliefs' that have no basis in reason and
observed facts,--that is fatal. It's just the trouble with so much of
our electorate to-day--unreasoning acceptance without thought."

"Then," I said, "you admit of no other faculty than reason?"

"I confess that I don't. A great many insights that we seem to get
from what we call intuition I think are due to the reason, which is
unconsciously at work. If there were another faculty that equalled or
transcended reason, it seems to me it would be a very dangerous thing
for the world's progress. We'd come to rely on it rather than on
ourselves the trouble with the world is that it has been relying o