ul, it must be a philosophy. Is it possible to contrive so
to fuse the crude with the refined as to make at least a working
compromise? To me personally, and to most of us living at the present
day, the enterprise appears to be impracticable. My own experience is,
I imagine, a very common one. When I ceased to accept the teaching of
my youth, it was not so much a process of giving up beliefs, as of
discovering that I had never really believed. The contrast between the
genuine convictions which guide and govern our conduct, and the
professions which we were taught to repeat in church, when once
realised, was too glaring. One belonged to the world of realities, and
the other to the world of dreams. The orthodox formulae represent, no
doubt, a sentiment, an attempt to symbolise emotions which might be
beautiful, or to indicate vague impressions about the tendency of
things in general; but to put them side by side with real beliefs about
facts was to reveal their flimsiness. The "I believe" of the creed
seemed to mean something quite different from the "I believe" of
politics and history and science. Later experience has only deepened
and strengthened that feeling. Kind and loving and noble-minded people
have sought to press upon me the consolations of their religion. I
thank them in all sincerity; and I feel,--why should I not admit
it?--that it may be a genuine comfort to set your melancholy to the old
strain in which so many generations have embodied their sorrows and
their aspirations. And yet to me, its consolation is an invitation to
reject plain facts; to seek for refuge in a shadowy world of dreams and
conjectures, which dissolve as you try to grasp them. The doctrine
offered for my acceptance cannot be stated without qualifications and
reserves and modifications, which make it as useless as it is vague and
conjectural. I may learn in time to submit to the inevitable; I cannot
drug myself with phrases which evaporate as soon as they are exposed to
a serious test. You profess to give me the only motives of conduct; and
I know that at the first demand to define them honestly--to say
precisely what you believe and why you believe it--you will be forced
to withdraw, and explain and evade, and at last retire to the safe
refuge of a mystery, which might as well be admitted at starting. As I
have read and thought, I have been more and more impressed with the
obvious explanation of these observations. How should the beliefs b