I venture to think otherwise. And as with regard to the subject of which I am writing, it may be said that "egotism is true modesty," I shall venture to say why I think so, even at the risk of wearying by a twice-told tale, for I shall have to go over well-worn ground, and I must of necessity tread more or less in the footprints of others. The reasons which satisfy me have satisfied, and do satisfy, intellects far more subtle, acute, and penetrating than mine. All I can do is to state them in the way in which they present themselves to my own mind. I shall be genuine, if not original, although indeed I might here shelter myself under a dictum--profoundly true it is--of Mr. Ruskin: "That virtue of originality that men so strive after is not newness, as they vainly think (there is nothing new) it is only genuineness." Cardinal Newman, in writing to me a few weeks ago, suggests the pregnant inquiry, "Which is the greater assumption? that we can do without religion, or that we can find a substitute for Christianity?" I have hitherto been surveying the substitute for Christianity which the author of "Ecce Homo" has exhibited to the world in his new book. I shall now briefly consider the question whether the need for such a substitute does in truth exist. The book, as I have already more than once noted, assumes that it does. It takes "the scientific view frankly at its worst"[40] as throwing discredit upon the belief "that a Personal Will is the cause of the Universe, that that Will is perfectly benevolent, that that Will has sometimes interfered by miracles with the order of the Universe," which three propositions are considered by its author to sum up the theological view of the universe. "If," he writes, "these propositions exhaust [that view] and science throws discredit upon all of them, evidently theology and science are irreconcilable, and the contest between them must end in the destruction of one or the other" (p. 13). I remark in passing, first, that no theologian--certainly no Catholic theologian--would accept these three propositions as exhausting the theological view of the universe; and secondly, that if we were obliged to admit that physical science throws discredit upon that view, it would by no means necessarily follow that physical science and theology are irreconcilable, for ampler knowledge might remove the discredit. "What do we see? Each man a space, Of some few yards before his face. Can that the whole wide plan explain? Ah no! Consider it again."