mental theism; he was so far from being a "hard egoist" in ethics that he declared that he would burn in hell for ever rather than lie at the supposed bidding of a Deity. Robert Ingersoll, the most popular Rationalist of that age, was—I judge from his private letters, not his ornate speeches—a man of the most tender and fine sentiment. It is simply ludicrous to suppose that, because we do not admit emotion to be a test of the accuracy of statements of fact (as all religious dogmas claim to be), we do not find any room for emotion in life. Is the whole of man's life an affirmation about reality or criticism of such affirmation? This supposed "hardness"—I detest these vague phrases, but one knows what is meant—of the Rationalist temper is one of the strangest myths the clergy have invented.
Reason not merely approves, but enjoins, the cultivation of sentiment. When the sentiment in question is one that shows a power of transforming life and impelling men to struggle against pain and evil, reason applauds it as one of the most valuable forces we can cultivate. Such, plainly, is the sentiment of sympathy. We look back to-day with horror on the industrial and social condition of England in the earlier part of the nineteenth century: the burdened lives and few gross pleasures of the workers, the horrible cellar-homes of the poor, the ghastly treatment of child-workers, the stupid and brutal herding of criminals, the tragedies of asylums and workhouses, the fearful political corruption and despotism, the subjection of women, the revolting proportions of the birth-rate and death-rate. We have still much to do to redeem our civilisation from medieval errors, but when one contemplates the social revolution that human sympathy has brought about in the life of England, one feels
