TWO PATHS, ONE GOAL. 



119 



he had passed was as it had been before." It is not for us to 

 appraise the amount of evil or of good whicli emerged after his 

 marvellous career was ended. A military genius unequalled 

 since the times of Alexander the Great and Julius Cicsar, a 

 statesman of the greatest prescience, of immense political 

 insight, a conqueror with world-embracing visions, a man 

 of dazzling abilities of many kinds but without a vestige 

 of moral principle or unselfish aim, Napoleon stands as the 

 exemplification of the doctrine tliat men are tilings and not 

 persons. We know it from his own published correspondence 

 that he looked upon himself not as a person to whom the 

 ordinary laws of conduct applied, but as a " force," a " move- 

 ment," a " phenomenon " in Nature's drama. He knew no law 

 but that of might ; considered no will l3ut his own, was without 

 conscience, without pity, and without remorse. He could come 

 with glowing sentiments as a deliverer to the cities of Italy and 

 nudct them of millions of gold, stealing art treasures from their 

 churches in the guise of a friend. He could be a Mohammedan 

 or a Roman Catholic while at heart an atheist, as it served the 

 immediate purpose. It is not going too far to say that one 

 good result at least has followed from his career, and that is to 

 show what a giant intellect divorced from any moral principle 

 can do when the man himself has brought himself to think 

 that he is a thinf/ and not a j^erson. 



With this view of purpose in the whole embedded in our 

 minds we can the better understand the meaning of life, 

 though " we know in part " must ever be the conclusion of 

 the human mind. Thus do we find it possible to regard our 

 earthly life as a probation and education, this earth as God's 

 school or, perhaps, one of His schools, and are prepared no 

 more to question His methods of teaching us than a young 

 child those of his schoolmaster. 



Theism an Induction. 



Since Temple wrote, the claims of Eeligion need no fresh 

 enforcing, even if those of Science have grown greater and more 

 cogent. But there is a point which should be raised as between 

 Religion and Science to which he does not refer. It is this, that 

 the evidence and reasoning by which the Theistic position is 

 supported is a nearly completed induction, and this, as it has 

 been observed, is the most that Science herself can say of any 

 of her greq,t generalisations or laws. It may be objected that 

 in the sphere of religion we cannot conduct the exact experi- 



I 



