196 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



as ancient, and as valid, as that of the understanding 

 itself. Then there are such things woven into the 

 texture of man as the feeling of Awe, Keverence, 

 Wonder and not alone the sexual love just referred to, 

 but the love of the beautiful, physical, and moral, in 

 Nature, Poetry, and Art. There is also that deep-set 

 feeling, which, since the earliest dawn of history, and 

 probably for ages prior to all history, incorporated 

 itself in the Eeligions of the world. You, who have 

 escaped from these religions into the high-and-dry 

 light of the intellect, may deride them ; but in so 

 doing you deride accidents of form merely, and fail to 

 touch the immovable basis of the religious sentiment in 

 the nature of man. To yield this sentiment reasonable 

 satisfaction is the problem of problems at the present 

 hour. And grotesque in relation to scientific culture 

 as many of the religions of the world have been and 

 are dangerous, nay, destructive, to the dearest privi- 

 leges of freemen as some of them undoubtedly have 

 been, and would, if they could, be again it will be 

 wise to recognise them as the forms of a force, mis- 

 chievous if permitted to intrude on the region of 

 objective knowledge, over which it holds no command, 

 but capable of adding, in the region of poetry and 

 emotion, inward completeness and dignity to man. 



Feeling, I say again, dates from as old an origin 

 and as high a source as intelligence, and it equally 

 demands its range of play. The wise teacher of 

 humanity will recognise the necessity of meeting this 

 demand, rather than of resisting it on account of errors 

 and absurdities of form. What we should resist, at all 

 hazards, is the attempt made in the past, and now 

 repeated, to found upon this elemental bias of man's 

 nature a system which should exercise despotic sway 

 over his intellect. I have no fear of such a consum- 



