y as such. He has no objection to follow a
doctor's directions or to be loyal to an official superior, and would
equally honour and obey anyone whom he could trust in religious
questions. But he has never found such a guide. 'A guide is all very
well if he knows the way, but if he does not, he is the most fatal piece
of luggage in the world.'

To use his favourite language, therefore, he still regarded a 'sanction'
as absolutely necessary to the efficacy of moral or religious teaching.
His constant criticism upon positivists and agnostics is that their
creeds afford no satisfactory sanction. They cannot give to the bad man
a reason for being good. But he was equally opposed to sham sanctions
and sham claims to authority. As a matter of fact, his attack upon such
claims led most people to classify him with the agnostics. Nor was this
without reason. He differed less in reality, I think, from Professor
Huxley or Mr. Harrison than from Ward or Cardinal Manning. In the
arguments at the 'Metaphysical Society' he was on the left wing as
against both Catholics and the more or less liberal theologians, whose
reasoning seemed to him hopelessly flimsy. His first principles in
philosophy were those of the agnostics, and in discussing such
principles he necessarily took their part. He once told Mr. Harrison
that he did not wish to have any more controversies with him, because
dog should not fight dog. He sympathised as heartily as any man could do
in the general spirit of rationalism and the desire that every belief
should be the outcome of the fullest and freest discussions possible.
Every attempt to erect a supernatural authority roused his
uncompromising antagonism. So long as people agreed with him upon that
point, they were at one upon the main issue. His feeling was apparently
that expressed in the old phrase that he would go with them as far as
Hounslow though he did not feel bound to go to Windsor.

Writing a few months later to the same correspondent, he observes that
the difference between them is partly a difference of character.
Circumstances have developed in him a 'harsh and combative way of
thinking and writing in these matters.' Yet he had felt at times that it
required so much 'effort of will to face dreary and unpleasant
conclusions' that he could hardly keep his mind in the direction, or
what he thought the direction, of truth without much pain. He could
happily turn to neutral subjects, and had (I rather doubt