back--the English Church--if one reads it rightly as showing evidence
of "removing those things that are shaken," in accordance with the
wise Epistolary recommendation to the Hebrews. For since the
historic and once august hierarchy of Rome some generation ago lost
its chance of being the religion of the future by doing otherwise,
and throwing over the little band of neo-Catholics who were making a
struggle for continuity by applying the principle of evolution to
their own faith, joining hands with modern science, and outflanking
the hesitating English instinct towards liturgical reform (a flank
march which I at the time quite expected to witness, with the
gathering of many millions of waiting agnostics into its fold); since
then, one may ask, what other purely English establishment than the
Church, of sufficient dignity and footing, and with such strength of
old association, such architectural spell, is left in this country to
keep the shreds of morality together?

It may be a forlorn hope, a mere dream, that of an alliance between
religion, which must be retained unless the world is to perish, and
complete rationality, which must come, unless also the world is to
perish, by means of the interfusing effect of poetry--"the breath and
finer spirit of all knowledge; the impassioned expression of
science," as it was defined by an English poet who was quite orthodox
in his ideas. But if it be true, as Comte argued, that advance is
never in a straight line, but in a looped orbit, we may, in the
aforesaid ominous moving backward, be doing it pour mieux sauter,
drawing back for a spring. I repeat that I forlornly hope so,
notwithstanding the supercilious regard of hope by Schopenhauer, von
Hartmann, and other philosophers down to Einstein who have my
respect. But one dares not prophesy. Physical, chronological, and
other contingencies keep me in these days from critical studies and