f as needful. Thus a refusal to
discriminate rationally or to accept human interests as the standard of
right may culminate in a convulsive surrender to passion, just as, when
caught in the contractile phase, the same mysticism may lead to
universal abstention.

[Sidenote: Is there a third course?]

Must unworldliness be either fanatical or mystical? That is a question
of supreme importance to the moral philosopher. On the answer to it
hangs the rationality of a spiritual life; nay, the existence of
spirituality itself among the types of human activity. For the fanatic
and mystic are only spiritual in appearance because they separate
themselves from the prevalent interests of the world, the one by a
special persistent aggression, the other by a general passivity and
unearthly calm. The fanatic is, notwithstanding, nothing but a worldling
too narrow and violent to understand the world, while the mystic is a
sensualist too rapt and voluptuous to rationalise his sensations. Both
represent arrested forms of common-sense, partial developments of a
perfectly usual sensibility. There is no divine inspiration in having
only one passion left, nor in dreamfully accepting or renouncing all the
passions together. Spirituality, if identified with such types, might
justly be called childish. There is an innocent and incredulous
childishness, with its useless eyes wide open, just as there is a
malevolent and peevish childishness, eaten up with some mischievous
whim. The man of experience and affairs can very quickly form an opinion
on such phenomena. He has no reason to expect superior wisdom in those
quarters. On the contrary, his own customary political and humane
standpoint gives him the only authoritative measure of their merits and
possible uses. "These sectaries and dreamers," he will say to himself,
"cannot understand one another nor the role they themselves play in
society. It is for us to make the best of them we can, taking such
prudent measures as are possible to enlist the forces they represent in
works of common utility."

[Sidenote: Yes; for experience has intrinsic inalienable values.]

The philosopher's task, in these premisses, is to discover an escape
from worldliness which shall offer a rational advance over it, such as
fanaticism and mysticism cannot afford. Does the Life of Reason differ
from that of convention? Is there a spirituality really wiser than
common-sense? That there is appears in many directions. W