354 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



masses of mankind, for poetical minds who live above 

 the ordinary level of existence, or for thinkers who 

 enjoy the luxury of the sapientnm templa sercna, to frame 

 for themselves some abstract view of the world and life 

 which satisfies their spiritual needs. But such existences 

 are only hothouse plants, the choice fruits of a spiritual 

 atmosphere, the product of a general culture and civilisa- 

 tion which has grown up and is maintained through the 

 influence of quite different and more powerful moral 

 forces ; they would gradually and inevitably disappear if 

 those moral forces themselves ceased to exist or were 

 not continually renovated. To maintain a belief in 

 these underlying spiritual forces, to cultivate the sense 

 of Eeverence, the conviction that there is something 

 which remains intact and unchangeable in and amidst 

 the fluctuations of opinion, the extremes of theory, the 

 struggles towards reform and the storms of revolution, 

 something that constitutes a secure foundation and an 

 abiding centre of reference and appeal, something, in 

 fact, which in our minds deserves the name of the All- 

 Holy ; this seems to be an indispensable requisite to our 

 individual and still more to our social welfare and 

 happiness. And the education and preservation of this 

 sentiment appears to be the most important, but also 

 the most difficult, task for those to whom the guidance 

 and instruction of coming generations is entrusted. 

 Now to many of us it does not seem possible to divest 

 this sentiment of reverence of its personal character ; 

 inasmuch as it implies a relation between individuals or 

 persons, and grows up and is maintained during the 

 earlier period of our lives through the personal relations 



