very elementary idea seems to have come like a thunderclap upon
many who claimed the name of 'thinkers'; for it entirely
destroyed a whole artillery of arguments previously employed
against Revealed Religion.

"For a time, Pragmatism came to the rescue from the philosophical
camp; but the assault was but a very short one; since, tested by
Pragmatic methods (that is, the testing of the truth of a
religion by its appeal to human consciousness), if one fact stood
out luminous and undisputed, it was that the Catholic Religion,
with its eternal appeal in every century and to every type of
temperament, was utterly supreme.

"Let us turn to another point----"

(Mr. Manners lifted the glass he had been twirling between his
fingers, and drank it off with an appearance of great enjoyment.
Then he smacked his lips once or twice and continued.)

"Let us turn to the realm of politics--even to the realm of trade.

"Socialism, in its purely economic aspect, was a well-meant
attempt to abolish the law of competition--that is, the natural
law of the Survival of the Fittest. It was an attempt, I say; and
it ended, as we know, in disaster; for it established instead, so
far as it was successful, the law of the Survival of the
Majority, and tyrannized first over the minority and then over
the individual.

"But it was a well-meant attempt; since its instinct was