the mystery has gone from it. A Cockney excursionist goes round it
in a holiday trip; there are no

_Golden cities, ten months journey deep,
In far Tartarian wilds_;[5]

nor do the confines of civilisation, melt as they once did, into any
unknown and unexplored wonderlands. And thus a large mass of sentiment
that was once powerful in the world is now rapidly dwindling, and, so
far as we can see, there is nothing that can ever exactly replace it.
Patriotism, for instance, can never again be the religion it was to
Athens, or the pride it was to Rome. Men are not awed and moved as once
they were by local and material splendours. The pride of life, it is
true, is still eagerly coveted; but by those at least who are most
familiar with it, it is courted and sought for with a certain contempt
and cynicism. It is treated like a courtesan, rather than like a
goddess. Whilst as to the higher enthusiasm that was once excited by
external things, the world in its present state could no more work
itself up to this than a girl, after three seasons, could again go for
dissipation to her dolls. She might look back to the time of dolls with
regret. She might see that the interest they excited in her was,
perhaps, far more pleasing than any she had found in love. But the dolls
would never rival her lovers, none the less. And with man, and his aims
and objects, the case is just the same. And we must remember that to
realise keenly the potency of a past ideal, is no indication that
practically it will ever again be powerful.

Briefly, then, the positive school of to-day we see thus far to be in
this position. It has to make demands upon human life that were never
made before; and human life is, in many ways, less able than it ever was
to answer to them.

But this is not all. There is a third matter yet left to consider--a
third factor in the case, peculiar to the present crisis. That is the
intense self-consciousness that is now developed in the world, and which
is something altogether new to it. During the last few generations man
has been curiously changing. Much of his old spontaneity of action has
gone from him. He has become a creature looking before and after; and
his native hue of resolution has been sickled over by thought. We admit
nothing now without question; we have learnt to take to pieces all
motives to actions. We not only know more than we have done before, but
we are perpetually chewing the cud of our knowledge.