17 



Without a system of morals no civil society could exist ; 

 yet if mankind must have waited for civil polity until 

 some such system were built up from below, of scientifi- 

 cally tested materials, social constructions would have 

 been virtually impossible. In morals, as in the arts, 

 the art precedes the science ; the intuitions of genius 

 imagine social schemes of provisional validity, and new 

 and lofty standards of fitness. But a social fabric thus 

 born of a vision can bear no rough handling ; and even 

 the solid builders who would make a more permanent 

 foundation upon positive conceptions, while seeking 

 more or less deliberately to underpin the fabric, may, 

 and often do, shake it to ruin. 



Hence in all guardians of morals the dread of 

 meddling with the reigning vision of truth ; hence, its 

 sanctity, that no man shall try the stuff of which it is 

 made. And the dangers of heresies from within are more 

 fearful than those of alien attacks ; social cohesion, the 

 end of it all, is thereby more exposed to disintegration. 

 Yet nevertheless, as the generations of men change, 

 and as knowledge increases, men see from new points of 

 view ; and thus while for some the reigning vision retains 

 its apparent solidity, for others its rays are broken or 

 dissolved. Even John Henry Newman was compelled 

 to teach the relativity of truth, and that a doctrine 

 of development must be accepted. For every provisional 

 synthesis then the time must come when the appari- 

 tion of truth can no longer command united allegi- 

 ance, and criterions begin to encroach upon sanctions. 

 Broader and more stable foundations have, it is true, 



A. 2 



