FOOTNOTES:
[4] Even Professor F. H. Bradley, the ablest of living English philosophers, is responsible for the proposition that ‘to wish to be better than the world is to be already on the threshold of immorality’ (Ethical Studies, 1876, p. 180). As the book has not been reprinted, despite much demand, it may be inferred that the author no longer stands to all its positions.
[5] Thus we are told of the heroic Gordon that he was ‘perplexed perpetually, and perpetually in doubt as to the precise will of God with him’ (W. S. Blunt, Gordon at Khartoum, 1911, p. 88).
[6] The logical analysis may be carried further, as by Mr. A. J. Balfour:—‘To assume a special faculty which is to announce ultimate moral laws can add nothing to their validity, nor will it do so the more if we suppose its authority supported by such sanctions as remorse or self-approval. Conscience regarded in this way is not ethically to be distinguished from any external authority, as, for instance, the Deity, or the laws of the land’ (A Defence of Philosophic Doubt, 1879, p. 345).
[7] The same might be said of Mrs. Browning’s minatory picture of the moment’s passage
‘’Twixt the dying atheist’s negative,
And God’s face waiting after all’—
round the corner with a flail, belike. Religion cannot be more dishonoured than by the moral ideals of some of its champions.