e feel for pure form they assure us that, in
fact, we feel nothing of the sort. This argument, however, has always
struck me as lacking in subtlety.

Much as he dislikes mentioning the fact or hearing it mentioned, the
common man of science recognises no other end in life than protracted
and agreeable existence. That is where he joins issue with the
religious; it is also his excuse for being a eugenist. He declines to
believe in any reality other than that of the physical universe. On that
reality he insists dogmatically.[7] Man, he says, is an animal who, like
other animals, desires to live; he is provided with senses, and these,
like other animals, he seeks to gratify: in these facts he bids us find
an explanation of all human aspiration. Man wants to live and he wants
to have a good time; to compass these ends he has devised an elaborate
machinery. All emotion, says the common man of science, must ultimately
be traced to the senses. All moral, religious and aesthetic emotions are
derived from physical needs, just as political ideas are based on that
gregarious instinct which is simply the result of a desire to live long
and to live in comfort. We obey the by-law that forbids us to ride a
bicycle on the footpath, because we see that, in the long run, such a
law is conducive to continued and agreeable existence, and for very
similar reasons, says the man of science, we approve of magnanimous
characters and sublime works of art.

"Not so," reply saints, artists, Cambridge rationalists, and all the
better sort; for they feel that their religious, aesthetic, or moral
emotions are not conditioned, directly or indirectly, by physical needs,
nor, indeed, by anything in the physical universe. Some things, they
feel, are good, not because they are means to physical well-being, but
because they are good in themselves. In nowise does the value of
aesthetic or religious rapture depend upon the physical satisfaction it
affords. There are things in life the worth of which cannot be related
to the physical universe,--things of which the worth is not relative but
absolute. Of these matters I speak cautiously and without authority: for
my immediate purpose--to present my conception of the religious
character--I need say only that to some the materialistic conception of
the universe does not seem to explain those emotions which they feel
with supreme certainty and absolute disinterestedness. The fact is, men
of science, having got us