l8gS THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF 



419 



individual mystical doctrines. " It was very trying for Erasmus 

 to be identified -with Luther, from whom he differed absolutely. 

 A man ought to be ready to endure persecution for what he . 

 does hold; but it is hard to be persecuted for what you don't 

 hold." I said that I thought his estimate of Erasmus's attitude 

 towards the Papacy coincided with Professor R. C. Jebb's. He 

 asked if I could lend him Jebb's Rede Lecture on the subject. 

 I said that I had not got it at hand, but I added, " I can lend 

 you another book, which I think you ought to read — Balfour's 

 Foundations of Belief:' 



He at once became extremely animated, and spoke of it as 

 those who have read his criticisms, published in the following 

 month, would expect. " You need not lend me that. I have 

 exercised my mind with it a good deal already. Mr. Balfour 

 ought to have acquainted himself with the opinions of those he 

 attacks. One has no objection to being abused for what one 

 does hold, as I said of Erasmus ; at least, one is prepared to put 

 up with it. An attack on us by some one who understood our 

 position would do all of us good — myself included. But Mr. 

 Balfour has acted like the French in 1870 : he has gone to war 

 without any ordnance maps', and without having surveyed the 

 scene of the campaign. No human being holds the opinions 

 he speaks of as ' naturalism.' He is a good debater. He knows 

 the value of a word. The word ' Naturalism ' has a bad sound 

 and unpleasant associations. It would tell against us in the 

 House of Commons, and so it will with his readers. ' Natural- 

 ism ' contrasts with ' supernaturalism.' He has not only attacked 

 us for what we don't hold, but he has been good enough to draw 

 out a catechism for ' us wicked people,' to teach us what we 

 must hold." 



It was rather difficult to get him to particulars, but we did 

 so by degrees. He said, " Balfour uses the word phenomena as 

 applying simply to the outer world and not to the inner world. 

 The only people his attack would hold good of would be the 

 Comtists, who deny that psychology is a science. They may be 

 left out of account. They advocate the crudest eighteenth-cen- 

 tury materialism. All the empiricists, from Locke onwards, 

 make the observation of the phenomena of the mind itself quite 

 separate from the study of mere sensation. No man in his 

 senses supposes that the sense of beauty, or the religious feel- 

 ings (this with a courteous bow to a priest who was present), 

 or the sense of moral obligation, are to be accounted for in terms 

 of sensation, or come to us through sensation." I said that, as 



