I need say nothing about his pretentious imitator, who, under many names, has long been a familiar figure in certain societies. With no deep desire for truth, and poorly equipped for pursuing it, his main ambition is to indicate discreetly that he holds what the fashion of the moment regards as “advanced” views in their most advanced form. Wherein the quality of “advancement” consists, it might be hard to determine; nor is it (in this connection) a subject worthy of investigation. It is enough to say that “advanced” views must have an air of novelty, must be making some stir in the world, must be sufficiently unorthodox to shock the old-fashioned, and either sufficiently plausible to deceive the simple or sufficiently imposing to overawe them. I do not think that I shall find many converts among members of this class; nor is it to them that I desire to speak. But there are many persons, both earnest and sincere, to whom the conclusions which modern Naturalism extracts from modern science are a source of deep perplexity and intellectual unrest. Their mood, if I rightly read it, is something of this kind. They would agree that a world where God is either denied or ignored is a world where some higher values are greatly impoverished. They would read the lectures I have devoted to Beauty and Morals with sympathy, if not with agreement. Life, they would admit, is but a poor thing if it does no more than fill with vain desires the brief interval between two material “accidents”—the “accident” which brought it into being, and the “accident” which will extinguish it for ever. But this (they will say) is no argument. A wise man faces facts, a good man prefers the hardest truth to the most alluring illusion. If there be no ground for assuming a living purpose behind the indifferent mask of nature, let us not fill the vacancy with a phantasm of our own creation. Let us at least sink back into the nothingness from which we rose with our intellectual integrity undamaged. Let all other values perish, so long as rational values remain undimmed.