98 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



Strange that a mind in such absolute disunity of 

 being, so clean divided against itself, can think to 

 preserve its intellectual and moral sincerity, and 

 stranger the wonder if it ever can. Heaven itself 

 again as a motive to welldoing has become a 

 hazy aspiration unto eternal happiness somehow 

 somewhere, rather than, as once, a house of many 

 mansions resounding with immortal praise and 

 fulsome adulation. 



As mankind grow in working intercourse and 

 complexity of intervolved relations they are 

 by natural law of social organization inevitably 



" she says it ; they ought to regard the command of their 

 " superior as that of God himself, and submit to his govern- 

 " ment as though they were machines, or an old man's staff, to 

 "be moved at pleasure." — Exercita spiritualia Ign. Loyola. 



The quotation is second hand, but no doubt accurate. By 

 early and continued organic fashioning and constant subjection 

 to an order of set impressions and influences, with resolute 

 exclusion of disagreeing impressions, the habit of thought and 

 feeling reinforced regularly by apt ceremonies and offices, a 

 human being may be so moulded organically as devoutly and 

 sincerely to become such a machine of automatic thought, feel- 

 ing and conduct. Did not Cardinal Newman painfully and 

 persistently strive so to fashion himself — perhaps not with the 

 full success he wished — declaring that if a doubt arose it was 

 not to be entertained for an instant, that to pursue it even by a 

 moment's reflection was not to be a good Catholic? "Either 

 the Catholic religion," he says, " is verily the coming of the unseen 

 world into this, or there is nothing positive, nothing dogmatic, 

 nothing real in our notions as to whence we come and whither 

 we go." He was unable to believe and openly profess a creed 

 and at the same time tacitly to count its cardinal dogmas to be 

 myths and symbols. 



