familiar surroundings, and how they have had to
make peace with uncomfortable comforts and conveniences that are still
strange to them. They give us the discord between the opening egotisms
of youths and the ill-defined limitations of a changing social life.
They tell of the universal struggle of jealousy to capture and cripple
our souls, of romantic failures and tragical misconceptions of the trend
of the world, of the spirit of adventure, and the urgency of curiosity,
and how these serve the universal drift. And all their stories lead
in the end either to happiness missed or happiness won, to disaster or
salvation. The clearer their vision and the subtler their art, the more
certainly do these novels tell of the possibility of salvation for all
the world. For any road in life leads to religion for those upon it who
will follow it far enough....

It would have seemed a strange thing to the men of the former time
that it should be an open question as it is to-day whether the world
is wholly Christian or not Christian at all. But assuredly we have
the spirit, and as surely have we left many temporary forms behind.
Christianity was the first expression of world religion, the first
complete repudiation of tribalism and war and disputation. That it fell
presently into the ways of more ancient rituals cannot alter that.
The common sense of mankind has toiled through two thousand years of
chastening experience to find at last how sound a meaning attaches to
the familiar phrases of the Christian faith. The scientific thinker
as he widens out to the moral problems of the collective life, comes
inevitably upon the words of Christ, and as inevitably does the
Christian, as his thought grows clearer, arrive at the world
republic. As for the claims of the sects, as for the use of a name and
successions, we live in a time that has shaken itself free from such
claims and consistencies.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH

THE LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN

Section 1

The second operation upon Marcus Karenin was performed at the new
station for surgical work at Paran, high in the Himalayas above the
Sutlej Gorge, where it comes down out of Thibet.

It is a place of such wildness and beauty as no other scenery in the
world affords. The granite terrace which runs round the four sides
of the low block of laboratories looks out in every direction upon
mountains. Far below in the hidden depths of a shadowy blue cleft, the
river pours down in it