In this mood we feel the distinction between good and evil to be absolute, and we pledge ourselves to fight for the realisation of the good. Obviously this essentially moral experience derives in part from militant religion's loyalty to a God who strives within the universe against an equally real prince of darkness. Obviously also the chivalry of nineteenth-century romanticism contributes to this zeal. But the object on which it is directed is very different from the God of the churches. In a sense, indeed, it is worship of a tribal deity, though the tribe is in this case the whole race of man; but more strictly it is devotion not to an external power, but to the human race itself, or to that spirit which is thought to work in the human race for the achievement of a more glorious mentality.

Very diverse are the prophets of this militant faith, and often they reject one another. Their doctrines range from a modernised kind of theism and vitalism to Marxian materialism and its consequent proletarianism, and again from the crudest evolutionism to the most sophisticated humanism. Sometimes man is regarded as the blind instrument through which a hidden creative energy progressively achieves a goal not patent to men themselves. Thus the movement draws inspiration from Samuel Butler, and later from Bergson and Driesch, and comes in line with those modem champions of instinct and the unconscious who follow Jung rather than Freud; while in literature the movement contributes something to the inspiration of such writers as Mr. D. H. Lawrence, with his cult of "the dark god." Sometimes, on the other hand, it is claimed that man himself must take charge of his own evolution, directing the "blind" biological forces towards whatever end is progressively revealed as good to his own consciousness. Thus contact is made with social meliorism, and even with Comte's essentially non- mystical religion of humanity, with its motto, "Love, order, progress." Sometimes, with an optimism inherited from the churches, it is claimed that in the long run life must of necessity triumph. Sometimes, however, in view of the spatial and temporal immensity of the cosmos, and all the difficulties that confront man in his own planet and in his own nature, it is recognised that the victory of mind is very far from certain, that such success as has hitherto been won has been mostly accidental, and that in the modem world new forces are coming into play which may well result in the suicide of civilization, if not actually in the destruction of mankind.

But though very diverse theories may be assumed by this mood of moral zeal, one conviction is essential to it. Always it emphatically declares life or mind or spirit to be good absolutely, and their negation absolutely bad; always it renders whole-hearted allegiance to one side in a universal conflict. Always it is blind to the possibility of any kind of excellence other than the value of the fulfilment of vital teleology. It would spurn a universe in which life were ultimately to fail.

One poet of the movement is Meredith, with his devotion to the Spirit of Earth. And he also links it both with earlier romanticism and with a later classicism. He admired nature less for her appearance, as Wordsworth did, than for her vitality. And man he admired less for his individuality, as Browning did, than for being Earth's self-conscious intelligence. But Meredith is more than an apostle of the faith in Earth and Man. His Comic Spirit gropes towards the mood of detachment which I shall presently describe. Meanwhile we may note in Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells the same dualism of good and evil grounded in the dynamic nature of life, the same fervent championship, the same sense that man's real importance lies not in his individuality but in his instrumentality to the achievement of a goal which he himself has not yet clearly conceived. These writers have contributed to the faith which inspires militant "Labour" today, which distinguishes so sharply between the elect and the damned, which claims from the individual a puritanical loyalty to a certain social ideal or formula, which in fact is the modem, popular, and social-democratic form of Calvinism. Shaw, like Meredith, is saved by humour from rigid sectarianism, and gropes sometimes beyond the moral view; but Wells is more strictly confined within his faith. Bertrand Russell in his social writings, and in spite of his professed ethical scepticism, sometimes assumes the mood of righteous indignation; but though he renders allegiance to the ideal of cultural development he is also detached, and capable of dispassionate salutation.

The movement of moral zeal, then, which directs itself now in worship of a Life Force, now in loyalty to the awakening consciousness of man himself, has many sources and many expressions; and sometimes it has seemed to promise a widespread though new-fangled "religious revival." Indeed for many persons it is in fact to-day a living religion. But it is not distinctive of the modern spirit, and its original minds belong to yesterday rather than to-day. Not that it is outworn; on the contrary it should make an extremely important contribution to the culture of to-morrow. Shame to us if we evade that whole- hearted obligation to the advancement of mentality on this planet.