Huxley

or unconscious faith of every noble soul. closes his lecture on "Evolution and Ethics," with this strident note, though it is really a contradiction of his position in many respects. He declares that if we may permit ourselves any large hope of abatement of the essential evil of the world, "I deem it an essential condition of the realisation of that hope that we should cast aside the notion that the escape from pain and sorrow is the proper object of life." 1

The moral sanctions, the idea of duty, the capacity for sacrifice and love, which are needed, are at the foundation of the religion of Christ. He touches the highest and the deepest chords in the nature of man. He reveals God in nature, interpreting afresh to us what psalmists and poets have seen in the sky, and the mountains, and the clouds, and the sea, giving a new colour to the world, with a light that never was on sea or land. He reveals God in history, filling up the past with meaning and purpose, a meaning of love, a purpose to redeem. He reveals God to us in our life to-day, glorifying the meanest lot, making life to all an arena for discipline of character, and preparation for larger life, and for the display of virtues and powers which claim and receive the interest of heaven. We live not by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, and He is the Word, making the world and life intelligible. To follow Him is to fulfil our own highest destiny. To love Him is to love all that is lovely and beautiful and true and of good report in the world and man, and if there be any virtue and any praise to think of these things. His faith alone makes any adequate provision for that

1 The Romanes Lecture, 1893.

dread fact of sin which has blighted life and burdened the conscience; it sets a man in the love of God, and when he enters there he finds that he is pardoned, and reconciled, and dowered with peace. If it is a fact that man is by nature and instinct religious, it is no less a fact that the religion of Jesus is the only religion which is at the bar of the world's judgment to-day. /

A

V

THE PERFECT MAN

LTHOUGH we cannot allow art or science to

dethrone religion from its pre-eminent place, yet the emphasis put upon these sides of life is useful in compelling religion to take her sovereign power and to reign. It has done much to bring religion into line with her whole duty, which is to put a new sacredness on every sphere of human activity. Culture at its best, and religion, both alike see that the main purpose of life is education in the broadest sense, creating character, letting a man become. Life from this high standpoint is the history of a soul in its progress through the world, meeting adventures and experiences, and through them growing to full maturity. The vision of unrealised perfection, which is the deepest thing in both culture and religion, is a tribute to the idealism, which seems imperishable in human nature.

The old and stubbornly fought battle between idealism and realism in art and in life is largely due to confusion of meaning about what the two words at their best stand for. De Quincey said he was seldom disposed to meet any sincere affirmation by a blank unmodified denial, since all errors arise in some narrow, partial, or angular view of truth; and this is certainly the case in the long quarrel between idealism and realism. They often have to state their side in an extreme

form to counterbalance each other's exaggeration. When idealism is looked on as the home of all vagrant visionaries, and sets its seal on every vague romanticism, and every unintelligible speculation, and every vapoury mysticism-all with the one essential qualification of being absolutely unhampered by facts and unrelated to life-it is natural to expect the protest, which impatiently pushes aside the nebulous, the occult in all its forms, all traffic with mystery, all that sounds like rhapsody to the cold ear, all "striving to attain by shadowing out the unattainable." The transcendental is dismissed, as either the self-delusion of the dreamer, or the deceit of the charlatan. Realism asks for definiteness of conception, and for precision of statement. It pins us down to the crude, naked fact. It has no sympathy with the inexpressible and the undefinableif there are such things they can be let alone. Its great virtues are intellectual veracity, and lucid, accurate account of facts. Let us see the thing as it is, and if it has to be described or painted, let it be done as it is This appears a very reasonable demand, and seems to settle the question at once on the side of realism, but the demand which looks so simple only brings the difficulty into focus; for two men do not see the same scene alike. Art is more than transcription, as realism declares-it is interpretation; but even if it were only transcription, no two men could make the same transcript. Fuseli, painter and art critic, said he only wished he could paint up to what he saw. The same thing will appeal differently to different people according to capacity, sensibility, experience. One may look on a flower with the eye of a florist, another of a market-gardener, another of a botanist, another

seen.

of an artist. William Blake saw angels amid the swaying corn or nestling in a tree. A scene, which is dull and uninteresting to the listless eye, may be transformed by a touch of creative and interpretative imagination, as James Smetham says Gerhard Dow threw a glory over our very pickled cabbage.

Besides, there is an utterance of truth which asks, not for admiration or approval or even intellectual agreement, but for spiritual assent, the thrill of soul which recognises the truth and bends to its dominion. All truth cannot be put into the form of mathematical propositions, which if they are accepted at all must be accepted in the same way, as a straight line must be the same practically to all men however they may prefer to define it. The interpreter of nature or life or the soul of man cannot receive the same immediate and identical response and acceptance as a mathematical proposition requires. He must expect sometimes to meet with blank unintelligence, or with complete misunderstanding, because it is a matter of inward apprehension, spiritual susceptibility to the impression, and sometimes even moral adjustment to the truth. Strict realism would rule out of court everything which is not, or could not be, completely elaborated in outward expression, and would discount all appeal to feeling and imagination. protest of realism, which comes at stated intervals, has had a wholesome effect in all forms of art, in insisting on the final reference to reality, by forcing men to relate imagination to life and theory to fact. The true idealism is not found in the baseless visions of a

The

heated imagination. It may have its head in the clouds, but its feet are on the solid ground. The im