Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/261

Rh has not changed; and often it is less by logic and reason than by the strong and subtle links of association that we preserve what is good of past credulities.

The doctrine of conscious immortality, however much belittled by its appeal to selfish individualism, has done a work for the human race. It has held the germ of an ideal for unity which is receiving a more universal interpretation to-day than the earlier theologians would ever have allowed, or than man, in his then stage of development, could have thought it worth while to hand on to his intellectual heirs. Perhaps only because he conceived it in just such a form have its values been preserved.

I am reminded in this connection of the method by which the wild swine of the New Forest were taught to obey the voice of the horn by means of which the swine-herd, called them back each night from their free roaming in the forest. The way he did it was this. Having first formed his herd, some four or five hundred strong, he penned them in a narrow space where water and warm shelter were to be found; and there, in the allotted enclosure, according them no liberty, he fed them daily to the sound of the horn. Food and music became a sort of celestial harmony to pig's brain—when they heard the one, good reason was given them for expecting the other.

Presently, in a well-fed condition, they were