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was to a woman who had drunk that cup, that the angel said, 'He is risen; seek Him among the living,' awe seizes me, and I bless God who has made the world a miracle of wonder, and pray Him to remember that I am dust, and when He has given me as much as I can bear, to take another vessel, and seek Him out lips that the sight does not make dumb."

"South Wales, March 1875.

MY DEAR CARRIE,—Looking as we passed at one of the self-acting machines where the loaded waggons, descending, drag the empty ones up, I thought, That is the principle I want to introduce into human life consciously, and as a method knowingly adopted-the method of our machinery, or use of nature's forces, the laying hold of the dynamic relations, and using the force of a thing falling to do our raising. I want to use the power of the fall of a thing that has been raised, consciously to have that in our thought and aim in man's moral life."

On the dynamic relations of evil, Mr. Hinton, as we see, laid great stress. It was to him an integral part of the process of correcting the premiss, by which man is educated in the true sense of the word, i.e., made to educe for himself the true from the false, the right from the wrong, working out his results by a process of moral evolution. Evil in the world, he held, had its analogue in nutrition. In nutrition certain chemical elements are assimilated, and held in a state of tension, their tendency to combine being resisted in the organic matter. The force thus held ready for use is set free in the function, whether of muscular or nervous action, a chemical reaction taking place, which evolves heat and energy. Or, to take a far simpler analogy, evil is the raising of a

heavy weight, which in its fall raises something else. In one of the great world-sores, slavery, we can see this process ever going on in one form or another; but perhaps it is most strikingly exemplified in the movements that have led to modern emancipation. Naturally the premiss was assumed, to begin with, that the stronger might impose his will on the weaker. Self-interest enjoined it; what was there so especially sacred in individual responsibility to forbid the stronger animal mastering the weaker? But slowly the selfish principle worked out its results of sorrow, degradation, cruelty, and licentiousness; the evil grew more and more intolerable; slowly the force gathered, till at last it needed but a touch to set it free, and, in the fall of slavery by its own weight of evil, to lift humanity for ever to the higher moral level that respects personal liberty, and recognises the brotherhood of man and the sanctity of individual responsibility.

May we not, therefore, believe, with Mr. Hinton, that that other great nameless world-sore, which eats like a cancer into the heart of our modern Christian and civilised society, with all its mystery of depravity, degradation, and disease,-may we not believe it a force stored up to impel man to recognise the evil of self as a basis of life, the impotence of mere self-restraint engrafted on such a basis-a force to lift him to a higher level of a purity which is love, a chastity which is service?

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CHAPTER XV.

THE last letter in the preceding chapter, bearing the date of South Wales, was written during a brief sojourn among the miners of Merthyr Tydvil, on the occasion of the great strike, the causes of which he was anxious to investigate.

"Waiting for a Train, Berwick Station, May 1875. "DEAR CARRIE,-Since our talk together I have wanted to write to you on one or two points. One thing is instructive to me, as to the way in which it happens that my processes of thought seem to me to excite a mistrust or feeling of inaccuracy or partialness, even (excuse me-I only say seem) in persons who so appreciate me, and enter into the results of my thinking as you do. I think I do see a reason, at any rate, one that I recognise as distinctly true in fact, and also as quite accounting for the phenomenon.

"It is what I can scarcely now help calling my fluxion method of thinking; that is, the plan which I am quite conscious of when I look into the workings of my mind, of laying aside part of the visible elements of a case, in order better to see the others. What makes this process right is, that the laying aside is remembered; and what makes it necessary is the complexity of facts, the presence in all of them, not only of many, but of counteracting or balancing elements, so that the results

look simpler than they are, and the full extent of some of the things present, can be perceived only by getting rid, in thought, of the mixed-up influences of the others.

"The complexity of Nature-as I now judge, though I did not always know it-renders the process not less than essential to all true vision of her. You see how gravity is an instance of it; this is hidden by the tangential motion; it is only to be 'seen' by that being left out, and treated as if it were not for the time. I see it in art, too; indeed, I hold it to be a universal condition of true seeing; it alone can teach us how much there is, as, in order to see the oxygen in water, we must bid the hydrogen for the time to stand aside. I call it revealing by leaving out. Now, when this has been done, all persons, of course, can see it, by having it pointed out to them. But, you see, the only person who can see this first in any case, can discover it when it is not known, is a person who naturally tends to look that way or has been led to acquire the habit of doing so by long effort in vain to do without it. And you see how inevitably he will be misunderstood; that habit of laying aside in order to restore, that keeping in abeyance till the hidden things had been fully recognised-is sure to look like mere ignoring, mere putting away and oblivion, or even refusal, to those who have not the same tendency, or the same experience. Do not you see that misapprehension must And the more natural that method is to any man, come? the more it comes to him as of course, and as the simple and natural and only method of seeing (which it is), the greater will be the difficulty to him to apprehend why he is misapprehended. Many, many things will be guessed or supposed by him as the reason his thoughts are misconceived, or not seen, before it occurs to him that his so natural and inevitable method of laying aside some elements

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for a time that others may be visible, is what is not understood. I have no doubt this accounts for what is often very, very provoking to others in me. When a thing is said in reference to a remark of mine, how I am apt to reply, 'Why do you say 'but' so and so? of course I include that.' Of course I do, but no doubt I have put it aside, in order to see the other thing I note; and this is visible, only through the laying aside for a time of the first.

"This is one thing I wanted to write to you. I am persuaded it is the source of a lot of mysterious difficulty. It is natural to some people to treat things in this way, to let go for revealing, holding all the while; less natural to others; but the former are a perpetual source of grief to the latter. It is easy to see how arbitrary, wanton, and vexatious they must look. But here is the good of it; nothing is wanted but that the case should be understood to put it all right. Let those who do it be aware that it wants explaining-those who don't do it understand that it wants doing sometimes, nevertheless, and be ready to recognise the process. So here is another help to peace we may hope to have gained. Do you not see that these two ways of looking-that which reveals by leaving out and then restores, and that which simply keeps hold of all answer to insight and onsight? The former is seeing that which is not apparent. And the force which brings it is the discontent with the apparent, the feeling that the apparent is not, and cannot be the true. That is how a man is forced-no one likes it-to that leaving out. It is just as hard and just as painful to the man who does it as it is to the man who won't do it-only he is driven to it by a pain also on the other side; it recognises what you will remember under the objectionable term 'positive denial,' that a thing practically not present, yet is truly