[296] In nothing have we moved away from the pious savagery of a former age more noticeably than in the average Christian's attitude towards hell. "I don't believe in hell," is a very common observation nowadays even on the part of those who assert themselves to be good Christians, though surely from the Church's point of view the position is a highly heretical one. Modern humanitarianism is gradually teaching the "plain man" to see that if a heaven exists, and if human souls are to attain to a condition of perfect happiness there, it is inconceivable that there can be a hell also: for whatever the Christians of Tertullian's day may have deemed necessary to happiness, few if any of us in modern times could possibly (without undergoing a fundamental change of character) attain complete happiness while in possession of the knowledge that certain of our fellow human-beings were undergoing eternal torment. The fact that we could ourselves behold the tormented ones in their misery, so far from being an added source of pleasure would surely turn our heavenly joys into dust and ashes. We cannot be perfectly happy, as Prof. William James has remarked, so long as we know that a single human soul is suffering pain. In a book entitled _The Future Life and Modern Difficulties_, the Rev. F. C. Kempson "does not hesitate to defend the belief that there are souls which are finally lost, although he deprecates any materialistic presentation of that state of loss." As his critic in the _Church Quarterly Review_ (April 1909, p. 200) sensibly points out, Mr. Kempson "does not fully appreciate the depth of the objections against such a doctrine. To many minds, not generally supposed to be tainted with sentimentality, it appears that a universe where there was an ultimate loss of souls through the complete determination of the will towards evil would be an essentially atheistic universe, for it would be one in which the evil was in the end partially triumphant over the good." [297] "I don't know about the unseen world," said Thackeray in one of his letters, "the use of the seen world is the right thing I'm sure. It is as much God's world and creation as the kingdom of heaven with all its angels." [298] In some respects, it may be noted, Confucius's position is not very far removed from that of some of the so-called Modernists of our own time. Cf. Le Roy, _Dogme et Critique_ (4th ed.), p. 26; and the late Father Tyrrell's _Lex Orandi_. [299] _Lun Yü_, vii. 34. [300] Mr. L. Giles, _The Sayings of Confucius_, p. 87. CHAPTER XIV CONFUCIANISM--II