expect that a new impulse of ideas will advance humanity another stage.

Meanwhile the dissolving forces act only as they must. They obey the inexorable categorical imperative of thought, the conscience of the understanding, which is awakened so soon as in the creation of the transcendental the Letter becomes conspicuous because the Spirit leaves it in search of newer forms. But one thing only can finally bring humanity to an ever-during peace-the recognition of the imperishable nature of all poesy in Art, Religion, and Philosophy, and the permanent reconciliation, on the basis of this recognition, of the controversy between investigation and imagination. Then, also, will be found a changeful harmony of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, instead of that dead unity to which our Free Congregations are at present clinging, when they make empirical truth their only basis. Whether the future will again build lofty cathedrals or will content itself with light and cheerful halls, whether organ-peal and the sound of bells will with fresh force thunder through the land, or whether gymnastic and music in the Greek sense will be elevated to the centre of the training of a new epoch-in no case will the past be entirely lost, and in no case will the obsolete reappear unaltered. In a certain sense the ideas of religion, too, are imperishable. Who will refute a Mass of Palestrina, or who will convict Raphael's Madonna of error? The 'Gloria in Excelsis' remains a universal power, and will ring through the centuries so long as our nerves can quiver under the awe of the sublime. And those simple fundamental ideas of the redemption of the individual man by the surrendering of his own will to the will that guides the whole; those images of death and resurrection which express the highest and most thrilling emotions that stir the human breast, when no prose is capable of uttering in cold words the fulness of the heart; those doctrines, finally, which bid us to share our bread with the hungry

and to announce the glad tidings to the poor-they will not for ever disappear, in order to make way for a society which has attained its goal when it owes a better police system to its understanding, and to its ingenuity the satisfaction of ever-fresh wants by ever-fresh inventions. Often already has an epoch of Materialism been but the stillness before the storm, which was to burst forth from unknown gulfs and to give a new shape to the world. We lay aside the pen of criticism at a moment when the Social Question stirs all Europe, a question on whose wide domain all the revolutionary elements of science, of religion, and of politics seem to have found the battlefield for a great and decisive contest. Whether this battle remains a bloodless conflict of minds, or whether, like an earthquake, it throws down the ruins of a past epoch with thunder into the dust and buries millions beneath the wreck, certain it is that the new epoch will not conquer unless it be under the banner of a great idea, which sweeps away egoism and sets human perfection in human. fellowship as a new aim in the place of restless toil, which looks only to the personal gain. It would indeed mitigate the impending conflict if insight into the nature of human development and historical processes were more generally to take possession of the leading minds; and we must not resign the hope that in a distant future the greatest transformations will be accomplished without humanity being stained by fire and blood. It were indeed the fairest guerdon of exhausted intellectual labour if it might even now contribute, while averting fearful sacrifices, to prepare a smooth path for the inevitable, and to save the treasures of culture uninjured for the new epoch; but the prospect of this is slight, and we cannot hide from ourselves that the blind passion of parties is on the increase, and that the reckless struggle of interests is becoming less and less amenable to the influences of theoretical inquiries. Yet our efforts will never be wholly in vain. The truth, though

late, yet comes soon enough; for mankind will not die just yet. Fortunate natures hit the right moment; but never has the thoughtful observer the right to be silent because he knows that for the present there are but few who will listen to him.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND BOOK

[AS POSTSCRIPT].

THE appearance of the Second Book, and especially of its second half, has been long delayed by the aggravation of a serious illness, which leaves me little strength to devote to work. This has also made it impossible for me to include in my discussions certain important works which have recently appeared, and which are closely connected with my subject. In particular, I regret this with regard to Tyndall's Address on Religion and Science, and the three Essays on Religion of Stuart Mill.

Tyndall's address is, as it were, the official announcement of a new era for England, which plays so important a part in the History of Materialism. The old hollow truce between natural science and theology, which Huxley, and recently Darwin, had seriously shaken, is now broken, and men of science demand their right to follow out in all directions, undisturbed by any subsisting traditions, the consequences of their theory of the world. The continuance of religion is indeed secured by the Spencerian philosophy, but it will henceforth no more be considered a matter of indifference with what dogmas and what demands upon our credulity religious feelings find expression. And thus commences a struggle, such as earlier took place in Germany, which can only find a peaceful

termination by the removal of religion into the sphere of the ideal.

It was to me extremely remarkable how near in his Essay on Theism, the last great work of his life, Stuart Mill approached to the view which is also established as the result of our History of Materialism. The inexorable empiricist, the champion of the utilitarian philosophy, the man who, in so many earlier works, appeared to recognise only the rational principle, here makes the confession that the narrow and inadequate life of man needs greatly to be exalted to loftier hopes of our destiny, and that it seems wise to let imagination shape these hopes, so long as it does not come into conflict with obvious facts. As the cheerfulness of soul which every one appreciates rests upon the inclination to linger in thought upon the lighter side of the present and the future, and this means an involuntary idealisation of life, so we are to think more favourably of the government of the universe and of our future condition after death than the very slender probability would permit: nay, this ideal character of Christ is represented not only as a principal feature of Christianity, but as something that even the unbeliever can appropriate. How far is it from this to our ideal standpoint! The slight, rapidly disappearing probability that the dreams of our imagination can be realised is at best a weak tie between Religion and Science, and at bottom only a weakness in the whole system, for it is opposed by a greatly preponderating probability the other way, and in the sphere of reality the morality of thought demands from us that we shall not cling to vague possibilities, but shall always prefer the greater probability. If the principle is once conceded that we should create for ourselves in imagination a fairer and more perfect world than the world of reality, then we shall be compelled to allow validity to Mythus as Mythus. But it is more important that we shall rise to the recognition that it is the same necessity, the same transcendental