Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/235

Rh few (the very few) things he held as sacred. Rare and short-lived are its visits. The chiefest wisdom of life is to make the most of them.

But the driver was encouraged to further speech.

Once more he suddenly turned in his seat, and pointing apparently to some spot between the avenues and the distant hills, he announced that a hermit lived down there.

Wilson was amused, and asked for particulars, which were readily given.

'But perhaps,' said the little man, 'monsieur is a Protestant? Each one has his special form of religion.'

'No,' said Wilson. 'They are all interesting.'

The driver turned back again in puzzled silence, and they went on once more up the zig-zag.

'Why,' growled Randal, 'did you say that? You know that no form of religion interests us in the least. It is all an indistinguishable hash of effete symbolism and more or less degraded superstition.'

'Yet certain forms of it still satisfy human souls.'

'Only the lower types. What is stimulating those few, who are worth talking about and who still remain within the religious pale, is either the intellectual exercise of the new critical and historical methods, or else the democratic and socialistic aspects of the Founder's early teaching, both of them brought into