I do not know that I acquired any precise knowledge, but I drank deep draughts of wonder and awe.  The great man, with his amused and weary smile, was infinitely gentle, and left me, I will say, far more conscious of the beauty and the holiness of knowledge.  I said something to him about the sense of power that such knowledge must give.  “Ah!” he said, “much of what I have told you is not proved, it is only suspected.  We are very much in the dark about these things yet.  Probably if a physicist of a hundred years hence could overhear me, he would be amazed to think that a sensible man could make such puerile statements.  Power—­no, it is not that!  It rather makes one realise one’s feebleness in being so uncertain about things that are absolutely certain and precise in themselves, if we could but see the truth.  It is much more like the apostle who said, ‘Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief.’  The thing one wonders at is the courage of the men who dare to think they know.”

In one region I own that I dread and dislike the tyranny of the specialist, and that is the region of metaphysical and religious speculation.  People who indulge themselves in this form of speculation are apt to be told by theologians and metaphysicians that they ought to acquaint themselves with the trend of theological and metaphysical criticism.  It seems to me like telling people that they must not ascend mountains unless they are accompanied by guides, and have studied the history of previous ascents.  “Yes,” the professional says, “that is just what I mean; it is mere foolhardiness to attempt these arduous places unless you know exactly what you are about.”

To that I reply that no one is bound to go up hills, but that every one who reflects at all is confronted by religious and philosophical problems.  We all have to live, and we are all more or less experts in life.  When one considers the infinite importance to every human spirit of these problems, and when one further considers how very little theologians and philosophers have ever effected in the direction of enlightening us as to the object of life, the problem of pain and evil, the preservation of identity after death, the question of necessity and free-will, surely, to attempt to silence people on these matters because they have not had a technical training is nothing more than an attempt wilfully to suppress evidence on these points?  The only way in which it may be possible to arrive at the solution of these things is to know how they appeal to and affect normal minds.  I would rather hear the experience of a life-long sufferer on the problem of pain, or of a faithful lover on the mystery of love, or of a poet on the influence of natural beauty, or of an unselfish and humble saint on the question of faith in the unseen, than the evidence of the most subtle theologian or metaphysician in the world.  Many of us, if we are specialists in nothing else, are specialists in life; we have arrived at a point of view; some particular