crushed with the cry of “mere Pantheism,” or even “Spinozism,” as though these epithets, meant to be contemptuous, led us any further on our way. You cannot solve these dreadful problems by a sneer, and Voltaire, the prince of scoffers, would have had even more influence on thought than he had if he had contented himself with a less aggressive and polemic attitude towards the Church. Hell is a concrete attempt at Divine punishment. Punishment for what? For disobeying the commandments of God? How are we to know what God really commanded? And how are we to weigh the relative effects of temptation and powers of resistance upon any given man? How are we to say that an action which in one man may be desperately wicked may not be positively virtuous in another? It is a commonplace that virtue changes with latitude, and that we find “the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.” Why should we condemn some poor maiden of Clapham to burn for ever for a crime which she may not recognize as a crime, whereas we applaud a damsel of Martaban for doing precisely the same thing? And what is sin? Is there any real evidence as to what the commandments of God really are? Modern psychology seems to hold that virtue and vice are simply phases of the herd-complex of normal man, and have been evolved by the herd during countless generations as the best method of perpetuating the human species. No individual man made his own herd-complex, by which he is so enormously swayed; no individual man made his own sex-complex, or his ego-complex, or anything that is his. How can he be held responsible for his actions by a God Who made him the subject of such frightful temptations and gave him such feeble powers of resistance? Edward Fitzgerald--who, be it remembered, knew no more about these things than you or I--summed up the whole matter in “Man’s forgiveness give--and take,” and probably this simple line has given more comfort to thoughtful men than all Jowett’s bluster. Fitzgerald has at least voiced the instinctive rebellion which every man must feel when he considers the facts of human nature, even if he has given us otherwise no more guidance than a call to a poor kind of Epicureanism which lays stress on a book of verse underneath a bough, and thou beside me singing in a wilderness. If our musings lead us to Epicureanism, at least let it be the Epicureanism of Epicurus, and not the sensual pleasure-seeking of Omar. True, Epicureanism laid stress on the superiority of mental over physical happiness; it were better to worship at the shrine of Beethoven than of Venus, and better to take your pleasure in the library than in the wine-shop. But nobler than Epicurus was Zeno, the Stoic, whose influence on both the ancient and the modern worlds has been so profound. If we are to take philosophy as our guide, Stoicism, which inculcates duty and self-restraint, and is supported by the great names of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, is probably our best leading light.