m sure I don't know. I think Lady Fritterly called
him a codger.

_Lord Fondleton_. Ah, he looks like it,--and a rum one at that, as our
American cousins say.

_Mrs Gloring_. Hush! Mr Germsell is going to begin.

_Mr Germsell_. Mrs Allmash asked me last night whether my thoughts had
been directed to the topic which is uppermost just now in so many minds
in regard to the religion of the future, and I ventured to tell her that
it would be found to be contained in the generalised expediency of the
past.

_Mr Fussle_. Pardon me, but the religion of the future must be the
result of an evolutionary process, and I don't see how generalisations of
past expediency are to help the evolution of humanity.

_Germsell_. They throw light upon it; and the study of the evolutionary
process so far teaches us how we may evolve in the future. For instance,
you have only got to think of evolution as divided into moral,
astronomic, geologic, biologic, psychologic, sociologic, aesthetic, and
so forth, and you will find that there is always an evolution of the
parts into which it divides itself, and that therefore there is but one
evolution going on everywhere after the same manner. The work of science
has been not to extend our experience, for that is impossible, but to
systematise it; and in that systematisation of it will be found the
religion of which we are in search.

_Drygull_. May I ask why you deem it impossible that our experience can
be extended?

_Germsell_. Because it has itself defined its limits. The combined
experience of humanity, so far as its earliest records go, has been
limited by laws, the nature of which have been ascertained: it is
impossible that it should be transcended without violation of the
conclusions arrived at by positive science.

_Drygull_. I can more easily understand that the conclusions arrived at
by men of science should be limited, than that the experience of humanity
should be confined by those conclusions; but I fail to perceive why those
philosophers should deny the existence of certain human faculties,
because they don't happen to possess them themselves. I think I know a
Rishi who can produce experiences which would scatter all their
conclusions to the winds, when the whole system which is built upon them
would collapse.

_Mrs Gloring_ [_aside to_ Lord Fondleton]. Pray, Lord Fondleton, can you
tell me what a Rishi is?

_Lord Fondleton_. A man who has got into higher stat