ning self-consciousness take? Will it contain in it
that negation of the supernatural which our positive assertions are at
present supposed to necessitate? If so, then it is not possible to
conceive that this last development of humanity, this stupendous break
from the past which is being accomplished by our understanding of it,
will not be the sort of break which takes place when a man awakes from a
dream, and finds all that he most prized vanished from him. It is
impossible to conceive that this awakening, this discovery by man of
himself, will not be the beginning of his decadence; that it will not be
the discovery on his part that he is a lesser and a lower thing than he
thought he was, and that his condition will not sink till it tallies
with his own opinion of it.

If this be really the case, we shall not be able to dispose of
pessimism by calling it a disease; for the disease will be real and
universal, and pessimism will be nothing but the scientific description
of it. The pessimist is only silenced by being called diseased, when it
is meant that the disease imputed to him is either hypochondriacal or
peculiar to himself. But in the present case the disease is real,
deep-seated, and extending steadily. The only question for us is, is it
curable or incurable? This the event alone can answer: but as no future
can be produced but through the agency of the present, the event, to a
certain extent, must be in our own hands. For us, at any rate, the first
thing to be done is to face boldly our own present condition, and the
causes that are producing it. To become alive to our danger is the one
way to escape from it. But the danger is at present felt rather than
known. The class of men we are considering are conscious, as Mr. Matthew
Arnold says, '_of a void that mines the breast_;' but each thinks that
this is a fancy only, and hardly dares communicate it to his fellows.
Here and there, however, by accident, it is already finding unintended
expression; and signs come to the surface of the vague distrust and
misgiving that are working under it. The form it takes amongst the
general masses that are affected by it is, as might be expected,
practical rather than analytical. They are conscious of the loss that
the loss of faith is to them; and more or less coherently they long for
its recovery. Outwardly, indeed, they may often sneer at it; but outward
signs in such matters are very deceiving. Much of the bitter and
arrogan