temper of peace, and, in relation to
others, a preponderance of loving affections.

In illustrating these characteristics by documents, we have been
literally bathed in sentiment. In re-reading my manuscript, I am
almost appalled at the amount of emotionality which I find in it.

After so much of this, we can afford to be dryer and less sympathetic
in the rest of the work that lies before us.

The sentimentality of many of my documents is a consequence of the fact
that I sought them among the extravagances of the subject. If any of
you are enemies of what our ancestors used to brand as enthusiasm, and
are, nevertheless, still listening to me now, you have probably felt my
selection to have been sometimes almost perverse, and have wished I
might have stuck to soberer examples. I reply that I took these
extremer examples as yielding the profounder information. To learn the
secrets of any science, we go to expert specialists, even though they
may be eccentric persons, and not to commonplace pupils. We combine
what they tell us with the rest of our wisdom, and form our final
judgment independently. Even so with religion. We who have pursued
such radical expressions of it may now be sure that we know its secrets
as authentically as anyone can know them who learns them from another;
and we have next to answer, each of us for himself, the practical
question: what are the dangers in this element of life? and in what
proportion may it need to be restrained by other elements, to give the
proper balance?

But this question suggests another one which I will answer immediately
and get it out of the way, for it has more than once already vexed
us.[330] Ought it to be assumed that in all men the mixture of religion
with other elements should be identical? Ought it, indeed, to be
assumed that the lives of all men should show identical religious
elements? In other words, is the existence of so many religious types
and sects and creeds regrettable?

[330] For example, on pages 135, 160, 326 above.

To these questions I answer "No" emphatically. And my reason is that I
do not see how it is possible that creatures in such different
positions and with such different powers as human individuals are,
should have exactly the same functions and the same duties. No two of
us have identical difficulties, nor should we be expected to work out
identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation,
takes in a cer