Lord Fondleton [aside to Mrs Gloring]. Who’s our black friend?
Mrs Gloring. I am sure I don’t know. I think Lady Fritterly called him a codger.
Lord Fondleton. Ah, he looks like it,—and a rum one at that, as our American cousins say.
Mrs Gloring. Hush! Mr Germsell is going to begin.
Mr Germsell. Mrs Allmash asked me last night whether my thoughts had been directed to the topic which is uppermost just now in so many minds in regard to the religion of the future, and I ventured to tell her that it would be found to be contained in the generalised expediency of the past.
Mr Fussle. Pardon me, but the religion of the future must be the result of an evolutionary process, and I don’t see how generalisations of past expediency are to help the evolution of humanity.
Germsell. They throw light upon it; and the study of the evolutionary process so far teaches us how we may evolve in the future. For instance, you have only got to think of evolution as divided into moral, astronomic, geologic, biologic, psychologic, sociologic, æsthetic, and so forth, and you will find that there is always an evolution of the parts into which it divides itself, and that therefore there is but one evolution going on everywhere after the same manner. The work of science has been not to extend our experience, for that is impossible, but to systematise it; and in that systematisation of it will be found the religion of which we are in search.
Drygull. May I ask why you deem it impossible that our experience can be extended?
Germsell. Because it has itself defined its limits. The combined experience of humanity, so far as its earliest records go, has been limited by laws, the nature of which
have been ascertained: it is impossible that it should be transcended without violation of the conclusions arrived at by positive science.