388 H. HAVELOCK ELLIS : As an instance of his intensely imaginative seeing, nothing can be more characteristic than a passage that is thrown simply and incidentally into one of his letters : " The Being I mean by ' Man ' is the being I perceive, and about whose mode of being you might ask me innumerable equally unan- swerable and indifferent questions. I haven't reasoned him out. I perceive him, nay, I love him, that is, Her; for she is by no means a ' colossal man,' but a little, trembling, quivering, passion-driven woman, throbbing with uncom- prehended instincts, and afraid with timid regrets and sorrows for half-imaginary sins, which she repents of, but knows she will still commit, and does commit. I don't know about humanity as any ' colossal ' thing whatever ; but that little restless woman-thing I know, for she works in me, and keeps me in perpetual unrest. Would not the wave be quiet if it were not for the sea, which, when the spirit breathes on it, can let 110 wave be still?" It is necessary to recollect this aspect of Hinton's mind even when we are dealing with his attempt to lay a rational basis for the harmony of intellect and the religious sense. In a paper entitled " Professor Tyndall and the Religious Emotions," which is republished in The Art of Thinking, Hinton. has embodied his doctrine on this point more lucidly perhaps than anywhere else. He takes as his starting-point Professor Tyndall's words : " To find a legitimate satisfac- tion for the religious emotions is the problem of problems of our day ". That is, we have to seek for some thought respecting the universe that shall fulfil two conditions : (1) satisfy the religious emotions ; (2) harmonise with the results obtained by science (that is, the senses and intellect) in their working on the universe. Now, argues Hinton, the most emphatic result of science is that there is nothing arbitrary in the series of events which constitute our experience, that they may all be reduced to law. And the most emphatic demand of the religious emotions is that the object to which they look shall have nothing of mechanical necessity. To find legitimate satisfaction for the religious emotions, then, we must seek a thought of the universe which shows it as not arbitrary and as not mechanical. Now, proceeds Hinton, the real simplicity of the problem becomes manifest. For, on the one hand, the emotions demand the exclusion of the arbitrary as much as science. And, on the other hand, science as absolutely rejects the mechanical as do the reli- gious aspirations. To prove that this is so that science rejects the mechanical reference need only be made to the fact, now generally recognised, that whatever we reduce
