192 IDEALISM AND POLITICS 



and, above all, he gradually brings him under the lasting 

 charm of the masters of those who know, to whom the 

 scheme of things has ever been very great, and man's mind 

 sane. Experience and years help, and the youth in no long 

 time discovers that the world 



" Means intensely and means good." 



In these respects and under such limitations as these, I 

 could agree with Mr. Hobhouse as to our times. There 

 verily is in our age a tendency to irreverence towards prin- 

 ciples, and a certain cheap freedom in the treatment of 

 them, followed occasionally by negation and indifference. 

 Religious belief at such a time does lose its authority, as it 

 is being shifted from an external to an internal basis ; 

 science and philosophy do become weapons for secularising 

 the world ; and, undoubtedly, a secularised world is a poor 

 thing. Naught within it matters much, for having lost 

 its spiritual implications what remains of it is shallow. 



But I cannot follow Mr. Hobhouse further and admit 

 that his description of the condition of the British people 

 is trustworthy. Least of all can I, in contemplating a time 

 of transition, forget the goal towards which we are moving, 

 or the spirit that is under many a diverse guise guiding the 

 movement. He has, it seems to me, fallen into the old 

 error of the denunciatory prophet, and read the commina- 

 tion service over the nation's head from lack of patience. 

 He has been " very jealous for the Lord of Hosts." He 

 has been most laudably ardent to prick the national con- 

 science awake. But though "the children of Israel have 

 broken the covenant, thrown down the altars, and slain the 

 prophets of Israel with the sword," he must not say, like 

 Carlyle and Elijah, " I, even I only am left, and they seek 



