champion of humanity; Heracles, the mighty deliverer; Apollo, Perseus, Theseus, etc. The abuses against which these heroes fought and strove were often figured as giants, monsters, dragons, evil beasts.

The Semitic gods and heroes do not correspond exactly with the Hellenic. Javeh (Jehovah) comes near to Zeus as a semi-savage tribal deity closely connected with nature and the sky, and as Max Müller has remarked,' intimately associated with the history of the Hebrew race. Christ, the last of the solar heroes and demigods, must be ranked with Prometheus, Heracles, and the Persian Mithra.

The inner meaning, then, of the Hellenic mythology is this: that as Ares, Aphrodite, and the rest were obedient to Zeus, but acknowledged by him, so the animal passions and the legitimate activities of life must be governed, and at the same time reckoned with by idealism.

Chief of idealists was Epictetus, the master, and next to him comes Christ. The former presents to us the intellectual, the latter the emotional side of Religion. The two great teachers are complementary to each other. The lame Greek slave was logical and rational; the Syrian peasant was guided rather by intuition. If your nature is weak and emotional, study as an antidote the Stoic system. If, on the other

1 "Lectures on the Science of Religion."

hand, you tend too much to intellectuality, return for a while to childhood and listen to the parables of Jesus. Both paths will lead you to idealism. "Christ was distinguished from all other agitators by His perfect idealism" (Renan).

As Christ's pure and simple teaching was complicated and burlesqued by Paul of Tarsus, so the idealism of Socrates was to some extent compromised by his disciple Plato. Well might Apollodorus say: "I would rather pledge Socrates in hemlock-juice than Plato in wine." Epictetus was fortunate in that his pupil Arrian did not obscure his glory in handing down to us his message.

The idealist compares every system and every institution with a pattern of perfection which does not exist on earth, and he endeavours to realise this vision rather than to conform himself to his surroundings (Romans xii. 2), for he cannot rest satisfied with anything that can be made more perfect. Thus idealism is the parent of progress, and every step forward taken by humanity is due to the efforts of those who have striven for an ideal. The man who dreams of something above him and beyond him, is an idealist. Browning says: "Tis not what man does which exalts him, but what man would do." It has been said that the mind is the measure of a man. But the measure of the mind itself is its capacity for idealism. So also the greatness of a nation depends neither upon

commercial prosperity, nor yet on extended empire, but rather on the ideals which animate the mass of the people. "Power (says Disraeli) is neither the sword nor shield, for these pass away, but ideas which are divine."

In his beautiful essay on idealism, Emerson has these words:

"Idealism sees the world in God (an expression which occurs first in Malebranche); it beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion, as one vast picture which God paints on the instant eternity for the contemplation of the soul."

Robertson (Sermon on Purity) says:

"The visible world presents a different aspect to the idealist and to the materialist; the one fixes his attention on what is beautiful, the other sees merely what is useful [to himself]. Whence comes this difference? From the soul or the want of soul within us. We can make of this world a vast chaos, a mighty maze without a plan, a mere machine, a collection of blind forces, or we can make it the living vesture of God."

The ark is the symbol of idealism, the most sacred symbolon sōterias, the special "sign of salvation" (Wisdom, xvi. 6). By faith Noah entered the ark (Hebrews xi. 7), that is to say, by idealism he was raised above the materialism and degradation of his day and generation. In the ark of idealism Moses (Exodus ii. 3) escaped

the corruption of the ancient Egyptian civilisation. Thus also Perseus was carried to his glorious destiny.

The Aim of Idealism is the Good of Humanity; the Result is the Perfecting of the Individual; the Instrument is Will; the Condition is Liberty; the Path lies through Reform and Progress; the Guides are Reason and Intuition; the Motives are Conscience and Love; the Support is Faith; the Encouragement is Hope; the End is Happiness and Peace and Joy.

CHAPTER V

MATERIALISM

"Bellua multorum capitum."

"Materialism, the philosophy of all expiring epochs and peoples in decay, is historically speaking an old phenomenon, inseparable from the death of a religious dogma. It is the reaction of those superficial intellects which, incapable of taking a comprehensive view of the life of humanity, and tracing and deducing its essential characteristics from tradition, deny the religious ideal itself, instead of simply affirming the death of one of its incarnations.”—Mazzini. "Was ihr nicht rechnet, glaubt ihr sei nicht wahr:

Was ihr nicht fasst, das fehlt euch ganz und gar."-GOETHE.

"It

MATERIALISM needs no accurate definition. is the negation of idealism, and is to it what darkness is to light, non-entity to existence, the devil to God. And in proportion to the degree of its acceptance by man, it ministers to his deterioration and destruction here and hereafter "

(E. Maitland: the word "idealism" is substituted for "spiritualism"). A materialist may be described as a man whose sense of truth and justice is rudimentary, whose perception of abstract beauty is very imperfect, and in whom the feeling of fraternity is altogether wanting. He is usually deficient in imagination, poetry, sentiment, and honour. In certain races which it is not necessary to specify, this character and the corresponding view of life are extremely common.

The materialist sees only the lower aspect of every question; he prefers compromise to conscience, expediency to principle, and his own interest to all else. Whatever his profession, religion, education, law, or medicine, he will oppose reform and progress; for it is his instinct to swim with the stream, to follow the multitude, to seek his own safety. The materialist will either hold aloof from all religion as a matter which concerns only weak-minded people, or else he will make a traffic of it, and set up his tables in the temple (Matt. xxi. 12). Materialism is more commonly associated with the strictest orthodoxy than with the theories of Darwin or Haeckel. In nine cases out of ten there is about the materialist something essentially roturier; he lacks nobility of character, or as Cotter Morison, a Positivist writer, puts it, there is in him no strain of hereditary altruism.

The materialist would fain live by bread alone (Matt. iv. 4), nor does he thirst for the water of

C