sufficiently sceptical, found in some lines of In Memoriam "the
indestructible and inalienable minimum of faith which humanity cannot
give up because it is necessary for life; and which I know that I, at
least so far as the man in me is deeper than the methodical thinker,
cannot give up." But we know that many persons not only do not find
an irreducible minimum of faith "necessary for life," but are highly
indignant and contemptuous if any one else ventures to suggest the
logical possibility of any faith at all.

The mass of mankind will probably never be convinced unbelievers--
nay, probably the backward or forward swing of the pendulum will
touch more convinced belief. But there always have been, since the
Rishis of India sang, superior persons who believe in nothing not
material--whatever the material may be. Tennyson was, it is said,
"impatient" of these esprits forts, and they are impatient of him.
It is an error to be impatient: we know not whither the logos may
lead us, or later generations; and we ought not to be irritated with
others because it leads them into what we think the wrong path. It
is unfortunate that a work of art, like In Memoriam, should arouse
theological or anti-theological passions. The poet only shows us the
paths by which his mind travelled: they may not be the right paths,
nor is it easy to trace them on a philosophical chart. He escaped
from Doubting Castle. Others may "take that for a hermitage," and be
happy enough in the residence. We are all determined by our bias:
Tennyson's is unconcealed. His poem is not a tract: it does not aim
at the conversion of people with the contrary bias, it is irksome, in
writing about a poet, to be obliged to discuss a philosophy which,
certainly, is not stated in the manner of Spinoza, but is merely the
equilibrium of contending forces in a single mind.