DISCORDANT IDEALS 7 



building temples, not only to manifest his feelings 

 of veneration, but to enshrine conceptions of 

 immortality, asceticism and purity which con- 

 demn what daily happens around him. Most 

 strange of all is his respect for celibacy, which 

 directly conflicts with the strongest of human 

 instincts, and, if generally practised, would 

 altogether extinguish human society. Yet down 

 the vistas of history we see it enshrined by the 

 admiration of mankind. Centuries before the time 

 of Buddha it was the ideal of Indian sages. It is 

 a vivid feature in the life history of Christ. It 

 was commended by the earliest Christian teachers, 

 and at one time afforded to vast numbers of their 

 disciples a refuge from the pagan wickedness of 

 the world. It has come down to us as an honoured 

 institution of the Roman Church. Protestantism 

 has rejected it : but not without some regret 

 some echoes of an admiration so finely expressed 

 by a Protestant poet : 



Thrice blessed whose lives are faithful prayers, 



Whose loves in higher love endure ; 



What souls possess themselves so pure, 

 Or is there blessedness like theirs ? 



If man is an organism which owes its develop- 

 ment to natural circumstances, whence come his 

 ideas condemning these circumstances ? Whence 

 does he derive this strange conflict of impulses, 

 that urge him at one time to self-indulgence, and 

 another to self-denial this antagonism which has 

 been figured as between the Spirit and the Flesh ? 



\':'. s; 



As to the nature of Life, philosophers have been 

 theorizing for centuries. There are some who hold 

 that it is the appendage of a particular chemical 

 compound : this might be produced in a laboratory 



