The Distinction Is Not A Purely Sentimental One - Not A Belief Founded Simply On Emotion.

There is a physical world - the world as known to our senses, and there is a psychical world - the world of feeling, consciousness, thought, and moral life.

Granting, if it pleases you, that material phenomena may be the causes of mental phenomena, that 'la pensee est le produit du corps entier,' still the two cannot be thought of as one. Until it can be proved that 'there is nothing in the world but matter, force, and necessity,' - which will never be, till we know how we lift our hands to our mouths, - there remains for us a world of mystery, which reason never can invade.

It is a pregnant thought of John Mill's, apropos of material and mental interdependence or identity, 'that the uniform coexistence of one fact with another does not make the one fact a part of the other, or the same with it.'

A few words of Renan's may help to support the argument. 'Ce qui revele le vrai Dieu, c'est le sentiment moral. Si l'humanite n'etait qu'intelligente, elle serait athee. Le devoir, le devouement, le sacrifice, toutes choses dont l'histoire est pleine, sont inexplicables sans Dieu.' For all these we need help. Is it foolishness to pray for it? Perhaps so. Yet, perhaps not; for 'Tout est possible, meme Dieu.'

Whether possible, or impossible, this much is absolutely certain: man must and will have a religion as long as this world lasts. Let us not fear truth. Criticism will change men's dogmas, but it will not change man's nature.

CHAPTER XXVII

MY confidence was restored, and with it my powers of endurance. Sleep was out of the question. The night was bright and frosty; and there was not heat enough in my body to dry my flannel shirt. I made shift to pull up some briar bushes; and, piling them round me as a screen, got some little shelter from the light breeze. For hours I lay watching Alpha Centauri - the double star of the Great Bear's pointers - dipping under the Polar star like the hour hand of a clock. My thoughts, strange to say, ran little on the morrow; they dwelt almost solely upon William Nelson. How far was I responsible, to what extent to blame, for leading him, against his will, to death? I re-enacted the whole event. Again he was in my hands, still breathing when I let him go, knowing, as I did so, that the deed consigned him living to his grave. In this way I passed the night.

Just as the first streaks of the longed-for dawn broke in the East, I heard distant cries which sounded like the whoops of Indians. Then they ceased, but presently began again much nearer than before. There was no mistake about them now, - they were the yappings of a pack of wolves, clearly enough, upon our track of yesterday. A few minutes more, and the light, though still dim, revealed their presence coming on at full gallop.

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