[2] _Deontology_, p. 191. [3] Miss Martineau says: “I saw with the pain of disgust how much lower a thing it is to lead even the loftiest life from a regard to the will or mind of any other being than from a natural working out of our own powers” (_Autobiography_, Vol. II.). I must humbly confess I have not come yet to see anything of the kind. Provided that the Being to whose will we have regard is Supreme Goodness itself, it seems to me infinitely _higher_ to strive to assimilate our will to His than to “work out our own powers.” [4] _Alone to the Alone_, p. 110, third edition. [5] _E.g._, the following passage, which deserves to be reprinted a hundred times, _Nineteenth Century_, July, 1877, p. 832: “We entirely agree with the theologians that our age is beset with a grievous danger of materialism. There is a school of teachers abroad, and they have found an echo here, who dream that victorious vivisection will ultimately win them anatomical solutions of man’s moral and spiritual mysteries. Such unholy nightmares, it is true, are not likely to beguile many minds in a country like this, where social and moral problems are still in their natural ascendant. But there is a subtler kind of materialism, of which the dangers are real. It does not, indeed, put forth the bestial sophism that the apex of philosophy is to be won by improved microscopes and new batteries. But then it has nothing to say about the spiritual life of men. It fills the air with pæans to science, but it always means physical, not moral science. It shirks the question of questions,--To what human end is this knowledge? How shall man thereby order his life as a whole? Where is he to find the object of the yearnings of his spirit?” I am not concerned to defend the orthodox ideal of heaven against Mr. Harrison’s strictures; but I cannot help entering a protest against his sneer at the “eternity of the tabor” as “so gross, so sensual a creed.” It seems to me it errs by an excessive and unreal spirituality. It was, certainly, not a “gross” or “sensual” order of mind which deemed the act of _adoration_ to be one wherein man could spend an eternity of ecstasy. [6] Pages 838, 839. [7] _Autobiography_, Vol. II., p. 356. [8] _Age of Science_, p. 49. [9] _Autobiography_, pp. 333, 438. [10] Harriet Martineau’s last letter to Mr. Atkinson, Ambleside, May 19, 1876, _Autobiography_, Vol. III., p. 453. [11] I have heard of two very great living philosophers who thought they had pretty nearly got rid of Final Causes, but who, in talking together, found it hard to avoid assuming their existence. One of them, in fact, in detailing his own observations and discoveries concerning animals and plants, used so often terms implying that there was a _purpose_ visible in natural arrangements that his friend stopped him, and said, “Mr. ----, you are getting strangely _teleological_!”