re with you and all well-disposed men,
moves me to do this or that. But the former makes an exterior reference
and escapes a risk of self-righteousness.

I have recently been reading a book by Mr. Joseph McCabe called "The
Tyranny of Shams," in which he displays very typically this curious
tendency to a sort of religion with God "blacked out." His is an
extremely interesting case. He is a writer who was formerly a Roman
Catholic priest, and in his reaction from Catholicism he displays a
resolution even sterner than Professor Metchnikoff's, to deny that
anything religious or divine can exist, that there can be any aim
in life except happiness, or any guide but "science." But--and here
immediately he turns east again--he is careful not to say "individual
happiness." And he says "Pleasure is, as Epicureans insisted, only
a part of a large ideal of happiness." So he lets the happiness of
devotion and sacrifice creep in. So he opens indefinite possibilities of
getting away from any merely materialistic rule of life. And he writes:

"In every civilised nation the mass of the people are inert and
indifferent. Some even make a pretence of justifying their inertness.
Why, they ask, should we stir at all? Is there such a thing as a duty to
improve the earth? What is the meaning or purpose of life? Or has it a
purpose?

"One generally finds that this kind of reasoning is merely a piece of
controversial athletics or a thin excuse for idleness. People tell you
that the conflict of science and religion--it would be better to say,
the conflict of modern culture and ancient traditions--has robbed life
of its plain significance. The men who, like Tolstoi, seriously urge
this point fail to appreciate the modern outlook on life. Certainly
modern culture--science, history, philosophy, and art--finds no purpose
in life: that is to say, no purpose eternally fixed and to be discovered
by man. A great chemist said a few years ago that he could imagine 'a
series of lucky accidents'--the chance blowing by the wind of certain
chemicals into pools on the primitive earth--accounting for the first
appearance of life; and one might not unjustly sum up the influences
which have lifted those early germs to the level of conscious beings as
a similar series of lucky accidents.

"But it is sheer affectation to say that this demoralises us. If there
is no purpose impressed on the universe, or prefixed to the development
of humanity, it follows only t