the philosophical attitudes of the Confucian. All these various
relationships to God are, we are informed, entirely the private affairs
of those who live by them; and if Catholics were truly spiritual they
would understand that this was so and not seek to supplant by a system
which is now, at any rate, become an essentially European way of looking
at things, these ancient creeds and philosophies that are far better
suited to the Oriental temperament.

But the matter is worse, even, than this. It may conceivably be argued,
says the modern man of the world, that after all those Oriental
religions have not developed such virtues and graces as has
Christianity. It may perhaps be argued that in time the religion of the
West, if missionaries will persevere, will raise the Hindu higher than
his own obscenities have succeeded in doing, and that the civilization
produced by Christianity is actually of a higher type, in spite of its
evil by-products, than that of the head-hunters of Borneo and the bloody
savages of Africa. But at any rate there is no excuse whatever for the
intolerant Catholic proselytizer in English homes. For, roughly
speaking, it is only the Catholic whom you cannot trust in your own home
circle; sooner or later you will find him, if he at all lives up to his
principles, insinuating the praises of his own faith and the weaknesses
of your own; your sons and daughters he considers to be fair game; he
thinks nothing of your domestic peace in comparison with the propagation
of his own tenets. He is characterized, first and last, by that dogmatic
and intolerant spirit that is the exact contrary of all that the modern
world deems to be the spirit of true Christianity. True Christianity,
then, as has been said, is essentially a private, personal, and
individual matter between each soul and her God.

(ii) The second charge brought against Catholics is that they make