And this, indeed, is only congruous with that changed estimate of moral values which prevails amongst the poor. Mr. Reynolds, amongst his Devon fishermen, finds the same general summing-up of moral guilt or excellence as Miss Loane has found in the mean streets of the great cities. “Generosity ranks far before justice, sympathy before truth, love before chastity, a pliant and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one. In brief, the less admixture of intellect required for the practice of any virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation.” It is the emotional, indeed, against the intellectual: to one point of view, life in an incomplete condition of development; to another, life lived nearer to its central heart. Certainly, in the combination of Christian and ethical dicta which make up the popular moral code of modern civilisation, the standard of the poor is nearer to the Christian standard. One can see how many of the New Testament assertions have been fashioned from the common democratic mind, as Socrates and Plato from the aristocratic. Yet religion counts for little in the scheme of human affairs. There is, indeed, nothing of a definite denial; the fishing village would be scandalised by any truculent disproof of Christianity. The children go regularly to Sunday school; their parents believe in God and in a better time coming. But the general spirit reveals that widespread and prevailing uncertainty, and conviction of uncertainty, which to-day is the most dominant attitude in face of ultimate problems. “Tony” the fisherman pronounces religion to be “the business of the clergy, who are paid for it, and of those who take it up as a hobby, including the impertinent persons who thrust hell-fire tracts upon the fisher-folk. ‘Us can’t ’spect to know nort about it,’ says Tony. ‘’Tain’t no business o’ ours. May be as they says; may be not. It don’t matter, that I sees. ’Twill be all the same in a hundred years’ time, when we’re a-grinning up at the daisy-roots.’”[4]