But granted, people may say, that religion is what you say, a cult of the emotions, of what use is it? Why should these emotions be cultivated at all? You say that they are beautiful because they are true, and that they are true because they are of use. Of what use are they? Some can be explained perhaps, but not most--not the instinct of God, for instance, nor of Law, nor the instinct of prayer. It seems to me that unless you can prove that they are true, essentially true conceptions, they cannot be beautiful. And this you say you cannot prove. "No one can prove God," you say, and prayer, surely that is against reason, and demonstrably a weakness. Certainly not a good emotion to cultivate. "You say it is beautiful. How can you prove that?" * * * * * Travelling on the Continent among those places where there are little colonies of English people who for one reason or another have left their own country, there crops up occasionally a man of peculiar kind, hardly ever to be met elsewhere. He is a man who has left England, we will suppose, for economy's sake, who has settled abroad, perhaps in one place, perhaps roaming from place to place, who has no work, no interest in life. He has drifted away from the current of our national life, he has entered no other, but he exists, he would say, as a student of man and a philosopher on motives. One such, meeting me one day, turned his conversation upon wars and upon patriotism. The former horrified him, the latter revolted him. "Patriotism," he said, "can you defend such a feeling? Have you any reasoning to support it? Patriotism is a narrowness, a blindness. It is little better than a baseness founded on ignorance. How can it be defended? You say it is beautiful. Prove to me that it is so. I deny it." To whom, and to men like this, it seems that there is only one answer to be made. "My friend, the love of your own people and your own country, if it ever existed within you, is long dead or you would never ask such a question. I cannot reason with you on the subject, because it would be like reasoning with a blind man on the beauty of being able to see. He who sees knows; but if a man be blind, how can it be explained to him? Neither I nor my fellows can talk to you about patriotism, because it is a feeling we have, but of which you are ignorant. It is not a question of reason. But if you would know whether patriotism be beautiful or the ignorant foolishness you suppose, I can show you the road to learn.