Social, and Religious Life of Man. 205 



sophy of Plato should lead, step by step, from the indi- 

 vidual man to the idea of a republic of men under the 

 personal superintendence of a Divine Being, and why a 

 higher philosophy than that of Plato should bring men 

 together in a church with Christ for its head it is easy, 

 that is to say, to find a key to much that would other- 

 wise be very unintelligible in the social and religious life 

 of man. 



Sociology, with self as its centre, is, to my mind, no 

 key at all to the social life of man. Instead of tight- 

 ening it loosens the bonds which bind husband to wife, 

 parent to child, friend to friend, man to man, and all 

 men to home and country. Man cannot, if he would, 

 altogether shut himself up in self. He dimly perceives 

 that self-sacrifice must be the paramount law of his 

 being. He feels himself disgraced if he does not risk 

 his own life to save that of another person. He shud- 

 ders at the mere thought of an execution ; he cannot 

 look upon a dying person, even when death comes in 

 his most peaceful guise, with indifference. He feels, in 

 these and a thousand other ways, that Jean Paul was 

 speaking quite soberly when he said " the heart of man 

 takes more into itself than his head, and the better man 

 must needs despise himself if his arms should reach 

 only round a single planet." And this feeling must 

 gain upon him just in proportion as he realises more 

 clearly the boundless capacity of that something be- 

 longing to him which is called the heart which finds 

 expression not in selfishness, but in selflessness, 

 which strives unceasingly to enter into communion 

 with all mankind and with nature generally, and which 

 may be nothing less than one of the many ways in 

 which man is made to know that the doctrine of unity 

 in diversity and diversity in unity, of which so much has 



