We  shall  not  be  surprised  to  learn,  then,  that
" transvaluation  of  values"  in  matters  religious  must
stand  to  the  account  rather  of  historical  than  of
biological  or  physical  investigation.  Language  and
literature,  conduct  and  institutions,  custom  and
myth,  society  and  law,  worship  and  dogma,  —  these,
v>'il,h  their  kind,  together  constitute  man's  peculiar
expression  of  his  own  nature.     Thus,  fresh  results


SHEAVES    ON    THE   THRESHING-FLOOR  5

in  anthropology,  ethics,  comparative  reUgion,  criti-
cism, jurisprudence,  ethnic  psychology,  and  the
history  of  civilization  affect  our  estimates  of  the
significance,  sweep,  and  implications  of  our  common
humanity  as  no  hypotheses  concerning  bodies,  or
even  the  body,  ever  can.     Being  human,  —

"Some  thought  imprisons  us;  we  set  about
To  bring  the  world  within  the  woven  spell."

Now,  Germany  was  the  mother-land  of  these  fateful
'human'  sciences.  There  they  had  origin,  grew,
took  definite  shape,  and  found  acceptance  for  nigh
a  century  ere  they  penetrated  the  English  world.
Echoes  were  wafted  overseas,  indeed.  But  Coleridge
and  Carlyle,  Emerson  and  Browning  prophesied  in
the  upper  air  to  a  stiff-necked  generation.  Their
early  audience  would  have  little  or  none  of  them.
