RELIGION 197 



But at the time when I fell under his influence, 

 he stood more aloof ; and this made him the 

 more impressive to a youthful atheist. He had 

 a keen sense of language and its imperial influence 

 on men ; language contained all the great and 

 sound metaphysics, he was wont to say ; and a 

 word once made and generally understood, he 

 thought a real victory of man and reason. But 

 he never dreamed it could be accurate, knowing 

 that words stand symbol for the indefinable. I 

 came to him once with a problem which had 

 puzzled me out of measure : what is a cause ? 

 why out of so many innumerable millions of con- 

 ditions, all necessary, should one be singled out 

 and ticketed 4 the cause ' ? ' You do not under- 

 stand,' said he. ' A cause is the answer to a 

 question : it designates that condition which I 

 happen to know and you happen not to know.' 

 It was thus, with partial exception of the mathe- 

 matical, that he thought of all means of reasoning : 

 they were in his eyes but means of communication, 

 so to be understood, so to be judged, and only so 

 far to be credited. The mathematical he made, 

 I say, exception of : number and measure he 

 believed in to the extent of their significance, but 

 that significance, he was never weary of reminding 

 you, was slender to the verge of nonentity. Science 

 was true, because it told us almost nothing. With 

 a few abstractions it could deal, and deal correctly ; 



