y no relation to what may
be considered good or bad moral conduct; those characterised by it live
above or below or round about their own moral standards in a fashion as
variable as that of moral philosophers. Many of the saints, ancient and
modern, have been notorious instances; question them as to their faith
or as to the logical foundation of their renunciations and they will
tell you in simple honesty or make it plain by their answers that they
have no head for logic, that they cannot argue, but only know and feel
their position to be true. In addition to the saints, many of the best
and most of the pleasant people in the world are of this type.
The type strongly in contrast with the foregoing is found in persons
of a more strenuous, perhaps more admirable but less agreeable
character. The savour of acerbity may be a natural attribute of the
critical character, and it is certainly not lessened where moral
philosophy is the subject-matter of the criticism. The continual
search after solutions of problems that may be insoluble at least
makes the seekers excellent judges of wrong solutions. Like Luther and
Loyola and Kant, they may be able to satisfy themselves, or, like
Huxley, they may remain in doubt, but in either case they are
excellent critics of the solutions of others. They are the firebrands
of faith or of negation; they are possessed by an intellectual fury
that will not let them cease from propagandising. They must go through
the world as missionaries; and the missionary spirit is dual, one side
zealous to proclaim the new, the other equally zealous to denounce the
old. But theirs is the great work, "to burn old falsehood bare," to
tear away the incrustations of time which people have come to accept
as the thing itself, and in their track new and lively truth springs
up, as fresh green follows the devastations of fire.
To most of us it seems of sufficient importance and of sufficient
difficulty to make our decisions in the little eddies of good and evil
that form as the world-stream breaks round our individual lives.
Huxley strove to interpret the world-stream itself, to translate its
movements into the ethical language of man. As knowledge of the forces
and movements of the Cosmos has increased so has our general
conception been intensified, our conception of it as a wondrous
display of power and grandeur and superhuman fixity of order. But are
the forces of the Cosmos good or evil? Are we, and the Cosmo
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