The religious life of humanity is for him only a pretext for such sensations, as is the intellectual life, as is the life of feeling. His corruption is vastly more profound than that of the barbarian of pleasure, is vastly more complicated, and the pretty name of dilettantism with which he covers it hides its cold ferocity, its appalling hardness. Ah, we know him too well, this young man; we have all just missed being such as he is, we whom the paradoxes of too eloquent masters have too much charmed. We have all _been_ this man for a day, for an hour, and if I have written this book, it is to show you, you who are not yet like him, child of twenty whose soul is yet in process of making, what base things such egoism may hide in its depths.” For Bourget, then, to have justified this picture of the youthful Spinozist, is enough. But for us, who for the moment have become philosophers, who have given ourselves up to the curiosities of the mind, it is not enough to have convinced ourselves that certain teachings are ugly and unpleasant to contemplate; we must know whether they are true or false. While much that is unlovely is also untrue, who but the poet can feel sure in his heart that only the beautiful is true? Well, then, if we were to face the issue that seems to be drawn between that universal necessity which science hopes to establish throughout the domain of nature, and that freedom which ethics regards as indispensable to the existence of moral beings,--if we are to face this issue squarely, on which side should we range ourselves? I answer: On both sides. If you say: But this is difficult to do, I should not be inclined to dispute it; were it otherwise, opinions on this subject would not be so much at variance. Yet it may not be impossible to do. And that the satisfaction of the result has been thought to be worth any effort it may cost to reach it, is evidenced by the long struggle which the history of human reflection records, to hold at the same time the vital ideals of science and the no less vital ideals of morality. To consider a way in which I believe this may be done, will occupy us throughout the remainder of the present discussion. * * * * *