Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/411

HINTOX'S LATER THOUGHT. 399 would also be a summary of those things which Hinton held to be not only permitted but necessary when the law of service is recognised. It must be pointed out, however, that this last result of Hintoii's thought is clearly related to the thoughts with which he started. It is all contained in embryo in his earlier writings. This Hinton himself, though he was careless of consistency, especially insisted on. There is nothing so clear in his earliest thought as the doc- trine, embodied in the word " Actualism," that the world is a process. It was easy to add that the external rule, the law of the letter, was " nothing in the world ". He always held that the development of his thoughts was perfectly continu- ous, that The Mystery of Pain really contained the half of his whole moral thought. In that book he had tried to show that pain must be accepted at the call of good ; all that remained was to see that pleasure also must be accepted. The two together formed his entire thought. It has been pointed out that his metaphysical thoughts gave him the first key to ethics. In the same way (he tells us) he found hi his earlier ethics the key to understand art. It was be- cause The Mystery of Pain had shown him sacrifice that he was able to see what art had to show him. It is still necessary to say a few words in completion of this brief sketch of the chief lines of Hinton 's thought, although in doing so we are returning to some of its earlier aspects. We have seen something of his attempts towards laying a scientific basis for religion ; we have yet to see how he dealt with religion from the emotional and practical standpoint. It is here, where his scientific instincts are latent though still implicit, that Hinton's genius for religion is at its clearest, and that, speaking from his own deepest experiences, he shows himself at one with those of all religions who have most firmly apprehended the mysteries of the soul. It has been necessary to point out how in- definite and obscure Hinton's theology was ; he would at one moment deny with intensity of emphasis the figment of a distinct spiritual world, and at another speculate, some- what languidly indeed, about the possibility of " extra-human beings," argued from supposed traces of their influence on man's history. For the man who seeks to knoic, to co-ordi- nate the facts of the world around him in an intelligible whole, such inconsistencies are an unmixed weakness. But to the man who desires to sec and Hinton had sacrificed all to become " a power of seeing " this indifference to para- dox is an element of strength. As M. Eenan says of the mingled theism, polytheism and pantheism of Marcus Antoni-