His piety was, indeed, a thing of chief importance. His views (as
they are called) upon religious matters varied much; and he could
never be induced to think them more or less than views. 'All dogma
is to me mere form,' he wrote; 'dogmas are mere blind struggles to
express the inexpressible. I cannot conceive that any single
proposition whatever in religion is true in the scientific sense;
and yet all the while I think the religious view of the world is
the most true view. Try to separate from the mass of their
statements that which is common to Socrates, Isaiah, David, St.
Bernard, the Jansenists, Luther, Mahomet, Bunyan - yes, and George
Eliot: of course you do not believe that this something could be
written down in a set of propositions like Euclid, neither will you
deny that there is something common and this something very
valuable. . . . I shall be sorry if the boys ever give a moment's
thought to the question of what community they belong to - I hope
they will belong to the great community.
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