from the clerical profession, it will end in a complete indifference on the part of the nation to religion at all.  The fault lies largely, I believe, with the seminaries.  They have set up so exotic a standard, screwed up the ecclesiastical tone so high, that few but timid, unintellectual, cautious, and sentimental people will embrace a vocation where so many pledges have to be given.  The type of old-fashioned village clergyman, who was at all events a man among men, kindly, generous, hospitable, tolerant, and sensible, seems doomed to extinction, and I cannot help thinking that it is a grievous pity.  The new type of clergyman would think, on the other hand, that their disappearance is an unmixed blessing.  They would say that they were sloppy, self-indulgent, secular persons, and that the improvement in tone and standard among the clergy was a pure gain; it all depends upon whether you put the social or the priestly functions of the clergyman highest.  I am inclined to rate their social value very high, but then I prefer the parson to the priest.  I dislike the idea of a priestly caste, an ecclesiastical tradition, a body of people who have the administering of mysterious spiritual secrets.  I want to bring religion home to ordinary people, not to segregate it.  I would rather have in every parish a wise and kindly man with the same interests as his neighbours, but with a good simple standard of virtuous and brotherly living, than a man endowed with spiritual powers and influences, upholding a standard of life that is subtle, delicate, and refined indeed, but which is neither simple nor practical, and to which the ordinary human being cannot conform, because it lies quite outside of his range of thought.  To my mind, the essence of the Gospel is liberty and simplicity; but the Gospel of ecclesiasticism is neither simple nor free.

XLI

It was a pleasant, fresh autumn day, and the philosopher was in a good temper.  He was my walking companion for that afternoon.  He is always in a good temper, for the matter of that, but his temper has different kinds of goodness.  He is always courteous and amiable; but sometimes he has a gentle irony about him and evades all attempts to be serious—­to-day, however, he was both benevolent and expansive; and I plunged into his vast mind like a diver leaping headlong from a splash-board.

Let me describe my philosopher first.  He is not what is called a social philosopher, a pretentious hedonist, who talks continuously and floridly about himself.  I know one such, of whom an enthusiastic maiden said, in a confidential moment, that he seemed to her exactly like Goethe without any of his horrid immorality.  Neither is he a technical philosopher, a dreary, hurrying man, travel-stained by faring through the ultimate, spectacled, cadaverous, uncertain of movement, inarticulate of speech.  No, my philosopher is a trim, well-brushed man of the world, rather scrupulous