The career of a man who devotes his life to reflection upon philosophy and religion, whose active work consists in teaching these subjects and in writing about them, is little likely to furnish incidents meet for flamboyant biography. But it may well be a source of profound influence, destined to affect the culture of a people or an age long after events that splash noisily upon the momentary surface have sunk into oblivion. Now Caird constituted an exceptional force, particularly in that native home of English-speaking philosophy and religion, Scotland; as such he merits memorial in these pages. Moreover, we must remember that, although, to his great regret, expressed to me often, he never visited the United States, his spirit has wrought strongly on this continent. Years ago, when I was a young Fellow at Glasgow, I received a letter from an American philosopher which concluded with words that have always stuck in my memory, “We look to Glasgow for light and leading.” Here Glasgow happened to be a synonym for the brothers Caird.

In the Genevan suburb of Champel, in an angle formed by the crossing of two unfrequented roads, stands a monument erected in the year 1903 by citizens of Geneva to commemorate an incident in the history of their community which for three centuries and a half has justly been regarded by critics as a blot upon its good name. The monument consists of a rough, irregular granite block about a man's height and resting upon a base of natural rock. On one side is the name of Michael Servetus, and on the other the following touching inscription:

FILS

RESPECTUEUX ET RECONNAISSANTS

DE CALVIN

NOTRE GRAND REFORMATEUR

MAIS CONDAMNANT UNE ERREUR

QUI FUT CELLE DE SON SIECLE

ET FERMEMENT ATTACHES

A LA LIBERTE DE CONSCIENCE

SELON LES VRAIS PRINCIPES

DE LA REFORMATION ET DE L'EVANGILE

NOUS AVONS ELEVE

CE MONUMENT EXPIATOIRE

LE XXVII OCTOBRE MCMIII

That such an inscription could be accepted as an expression of the best judgment of the modern Genevese in regard to this action of their fathers is evidence of a change of sentiment that has required all these three and a half centuries to come to its rights. During my travels two years ago I met a Genevan scholar of world-wide reputation in a field of knowledge that has kept him for the greater part of his active life far removed from the provincial feeling that might well cling to one who had never left the familiar scenes of early life. He was a member of an ancient Genevan aristocratic family, still in possession of a landed estate that for six generations at least had been in the hands of his fathers. In the course of conversation I remarked upon the admirable action of his fellow-citizens in showing, though tardily, their sense of the historic significance of Calvin's terrible act of justice. In so doing I meant to pay to Geneva the respectful tribute of my humble admiration. But the response was not such as I had anticipated. Not even yet was this Genevan aristocrat quite ready to admit that his fellow-citizens had done well to recognize thus publicly their regret that the man to whom they as well as he looked back as the creator of their redoubtable commonwealth had allowed himself this one human slip. Even modified as their expression of regret was, even though they had guarded the reputation of Calvin by ascribing his fault to the Spirit of the Age, still it seemed to this sturdy conservative that any such confession of error could be only another outburst of that radical temper which was slowly transforming the Geneva of Calvin into a community more in sympathy with the liberalism of the modern world.

It is generally agreed that religion is either the paramount issue or the most serious obstacle to progress. To its devotees religion is of overwhelming importance; to unbelievers it is, in the phrasing of Burke, “superstitious folly, enthusiastical nonsense, and holy tyranny.” The difference between the friends and the enemies of religion may, I think, be resolved as follows. Religion recognizes some final arbitration of human destiny; it is a lively awareness of the fact that, while man proposes, it is only within certain narrow limits that he can dispose his own plans. His nicest adjustments and most ardent longings are overruled; he knows that until he can discount or conciliate that which commands his fortunes his condition is precarious and miserable. And through his eagerness to save himself he leaps to conclusions that are uncritical and premature. Irreligion, on the other hand, flourishes among those who are more snugly intrenched within the cities of man. It is a product of civilization. Comfortably housed as he is, and enjoying an artificial illumination behind drawn blinds, the irreligious man has the heart to criticize the hasty speculations and abject fear of those who stand without in the presence of the surrounding darkness. In other words, religion is perpetually on the exposed side of civilization, sensitive to the blasts that blow from the surrounding universe; while irreligion is in the lee of civilization, with enough remove from danger to foster a refined concern for logic and personal liberty. There is a sense, then, in which both religion and irreligion are to be justified. If religion is guilty of unreason, irreligion is guilty of apathy. For without doubt the situation of the individual man is broadly such as religion conceives it to be. There is nothing that he can build, nor any precaution that he can take, that weighs appreciably in the balance against the powers which decree good and ill fortune, catastrophe and triumph, life and death. Hence to be without fear is the part of folly. Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom.

When Protestant missionaries arrived in Japan with the religion of one God and the brotherhood of mankind, the native religions of Japan were in a deplorable condition. Buddhism had received such a fatal blow that there could be no hope of its revival. It was almost destroyed by the revolution of 1868. Many priests and monks had left their professions. Some became Shintoists; others became officers, soldiers, teachers, merchants, or artisans. Temples were deserted, and used for schools, offices, or barracks. Bells were converted into cannon. Sacred books were burned or sold as waste paper. Idols were standing neglected, partly stripped or broken—despised, mocked, and shunned. Compared with Buddhism, Confucianism was in a somewhat better state; but some of its progressive adherents, filled with admiration for western science, lost faith in the sacred books, and turned from the study of them to that of science. Those who still adhered to Confucianism were despised as conservative, bigoted, ignorant, and narrow-minded, unable to go forward in the advancing steps of the nation. At the time of the revolution Shintoism gained the ascendency, and for a time was considered a state religion. The decree of the emperor was given in the name of the heavenly gods. “Return to your origin and be grateful to the beginning” was the motto of the loyal and patriotic. But among the preachers and adherents of this movement there were many who went to extremes, insisting that along with the power of the emperor everything else that was ancient should be restored. Some of these nationalists were narrow-minded, especially in their attitude toward foreigners. They insisted that the holy land of Japan should not be trodden down and defiled by unclean strangers. Meanwhile the tide of the revolution changed its course from restoration to progress, from exclusiveness to open-mindedness. It began to flow directly against the principles of Shintoism then held by many. This decided its destiny. Shintoism met the same fate as Jewish Christianity in the first century of the Christian era. Thus Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintoism had been, one after another, submerged in the overwhelming tides of the revolution when Christianity appeared in the extra-territorial establishments of foreign residents.

One everywhere finds people who have given up the hope of immortality or else regard it with extreme doubt. Forms of belief with which it has been associated have proved unthinkable to them. Worse yet, to hope for immortality seems not to be loyal to truth. “We want reality,” they say. “We propose to face the facts; we demand honest thinking. We have no use for dreams, however pleasant; we wish only truth.” Mr. Huxley's famous letter to his friend Charles Kingsley expresses this attitude. Here is a man who, in the greatest of sorrows, feels obliged to put away comfort and hope in obedience to the demand of truth. It is not possible to divide his mind into exclusive compartments, and to indulge an ancient religious emotion on one side of himself, while on the other side he remains the conscientious student of science. He must keep his integrity at any cost to his feelings. No one can help admiring this type of mind. A multitude of people who have nothing like Mr. Huxley's rigor of conscience are immensely moved by the attitude of such men as he. If he could see no truth in immortality and had to remain an agnostic about it, why should we not be agnostics also?

Whoever reads the meditations of Marcus Aurelius must be impressed with the constant self-examination which the writer practised. Far on the northern boundaries of his empire, among the Quadi, on the banks of the Gran, he composed his first book, analyzing his own nature, gratefully recounting his obligations to his kin, his teachers, and his friends. All the succeeding books grow out of a similar self-examination, accompanied by self-directed exhortations to fidelity, constancy, and patience. The title which the work bears is indeed the only possible one—To Himself—for self is alike the subject and the object of the author's meditations. The emperor's simple humility, his high desire to fulfil in every way his duty, his patient humanity, shut out effectively all priggishness and offensive egotism from his pages. Marcus Aurelius was not alone in his concern for self. If we look into other ranks of life in the second century, we find the same interest. With all its peace, calm, and nobility, the age of the Antonines was an age of egoism, of valetudinarianism both of body and of soul. Aristides the rhetorician has left us an account of his long and impassioned search for health, which for him was a religious quest. Apuleius, in his anxiety for his soul, had himself initiated into all possible sacred mysteries, until he at last found rest in the holy brotherhood of the servants of Isis. The emperor, the rhetorician, and the superstitious mystic furnish three striking illustrations of the tendency of the time.

Nervous invalidism as a specific problem is in one way or another everybody's concern. The invalid himself naturally wishes to get well; but he should recognize that it is possible to be sound in mind even though limited in bodily strength, and should come to see with peculiar clearness some of the needs and dangers and opportunities that illness may bring. We are apt to construe health too narrowly, and to forget the relations of both health and illness to character and insight.