have not been. Miss
Harriet Martineau, for instance, judging life from her own experience of
it, was quite persuaded that it was a most solemn and satisfactory
thing, and she has told the world as much, in no hesitating manner. But
a part at least of the solemn satisfaction she felt in it was due to a
grotesque over-estimate of her own social and intellectual importance.
Here, then, was a worth in life, real enough to the person who found it,
but which a little knowledge of the world would have at once taken away
from her. Does the general reverence with which life is at present
regarded rest in any degree upon any similar misconception? And if so,
to what extent does it? Will it fall to pieces before the breath of a
larger knowledge? or has it that firm foundation in fact that will
enable it to survive in spite of all enlightenment, and perhaps even to
increase in consequence of it?

Such is the outline of the question I propose to deal with. I will now
show why it is so pressing, and why, in the present crisis of thought,
it is so needful that it should be dealt with. The first impression it
produces, as I have said, is that it is superfluous. Our belief in life
seems to rest on too wide an experience for us to entertain any genuine
doubt of the truth of it. But this first impression does not go for
much. It is a mere superficial thing, and will wear off immediately. We
have but to remember that a belief that was supposed to rest on an
equally wide basis--the belief in God, and in a supernatural order--has
in these days, not been questioned only, but has been to a great degree,
successfully annihilated. The only philosophy that belongs to the
present age, the only philosophy that is a really new agent in progress,
has declared this belief to be a dissolving dream of the past. And this
belief, as we shall see presently, is, amongst civilized men at least,
far older than the belief in life; it has been far more widely spread,
and experience has been held to confirm it with an equal certainty. If
this then is inevitably disintegrated by the action of a widening
knowledge, it cannot be taken for granted that the belief in life will
not fare likewise. It may do so; but until we have examined it more
closely we cannot be certain that it will. Common consent and
experience, until they are analysed, are fallacious tests for the
seekers after positive truth. The emotions may forbid us to ask our
question; but in modern philoso