298 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



But the more complex the mind, the less does it like 

 to have to "wait till Sunday" — the less is it satisfied 

 with the solely biblical point of view, or the literary 

 and musical level of Hymns A. and M. 



The less also is it satisfied with the mediation of 

 a priest. Priest (or Priest-King) is sole mediator 

 in most savage tribes: his mediation is enormously 

 important in the Roman Catholic Church : less so in 

 Protestant Churches : until with the progressive rais- 

 ing of the spiritual and cultural level, it is perhaps 

 possible that he may become an obstacle instead of 

 a help. Mediators there must always be. They 

 are the great ones — prophets and poets, heroes, phi- 

 losophers, musicians, artists, and all who discover or 

 interpret or display what for the ordinary man is 

 hidden or difficult or rare. They mediate between 

 the utmost attainable by man and man in the lump. 

 As Hegel says of one group of these mediators, the 

 artists, it is the function of their art to deliver to the 

 domain of feeling and delight of vision all that the 

 mind may possess of essential and transcendent Be- 

 ing. But, with the spread of invention and the 

 change of civilization, their mediations are becom- 

 ing more and more readily accessible to all. I can 

 get, on the whole, more satisfactory mediation from 

 three or four feet of properly filled bookshelf than 

 from a dozen priests. Milton will give me doctrine 

 if I want it, but stupendously: Wordsworth will 

 reveal nature: Shakespeare the hearts of men: 

 Blake can put men into a mystical, Shelley into an 



