realm of thought, and people walked about therein fearsomely, as in a
land subject to earthquakes. It was as if people had said: "We don't
know what will topple next. Let's raze everything to the ground, and
then we shall feel safer." And there came a moment after which nobody
could ever look at a picture of the Nativity in the old way. Pictures of
the Nativity were admired perhaps as much as ever, but for the exquisite
beauty of their naïveté, the charm of their old-world simplicity, not
as artistic renderings of fact.

* * * * *

An age of scepticism has its faults, like any other age, though certain
persons have pretended the contrary. Having been compelled to abandon
its belief in various statements of alleged fact, it lumps principles
and ideals with alleged facts, and hastily decides not to believe in
anything at all. It gives up faith, it despises faith, in spite of the
warning of its greatest philosophers, including Herbert Spencer, that
faith of some sort is necessary to a satisfactory existence in a
universe full of problems which science admits it can never solve. None
were humbler than the foremost scientists about the narrowness of the
field of knowledge, as compared with the immeasurability of the field
of faith. But the warning has been ignored, as warnings nearly always
are. Faith is at a discount. And the qualities which go with faith are
at a discount; such as enthusiasm, spontaneity, ebullition, lyricism,
and self-expression in general. Sentimentality is held in such horror
that people are afraid even of sentiment. Their secret cry is: "Give us
something in which we can believe."

* * * * *