Part 22 (2/2)
One of the objects of the ”religion of humanity,” and it is an object beyond all praise, is to stily embraces the remotest fortunes of the whole human family
But in proportion as this end is successfully attained, in proportion as we are taught by this or any other religion to neglect the transient and the personal, and to count ourselves as labourers for that which is universal and abiding, so surelyto our vision over the ti importance of the place which ination, if so be that the material universe is all we have to do with My contention is that every such religion and every such philosophy, so long as it insists on regardingpheno other natural objects, is condeh endeavour Love, pity, and endurance it may indeed leave with us; and this is well But it so dwarfs and ih it nity, it hardly per love I have always had for Arthur Balfour, I should be untrue tofriendshi+p of a man who can think and write like this
Of the other two Prih no one knows them better than I do By no device of s; both their na chargeable with frigid impartiality or fervent partisanshi+p, and no one will deny that all of us should be allowed soht”
END OF BOOK ONE
MARGOT ASQUITH
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
BOOK TWO
PSALM xxxIX
5 Verily every ether vanity
6 Surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them
7 And now, Lord, ait I for? my hope is in Thee
CHAPTER I
THE SOULS--LORD CURZON's POEM AND DINNER PARTY AND WHO WERE THERE --MARGOT'S INVENTORY OF THE GROUP--TILT WITH THE LATE LADY LONDONDERRY--VISIT TO TENNYSON; HIS CONTEMPT FOR CRITICS; HIS HABIT OF LIVING--J K S NOT A SOUL--MARGOT'S FRIENDshi+P WITH JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS; HIS PRAISE OF MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF
No one ever kne it came about that I and in of our grouping together I have already explained:more of one another than we should probably have done hadand did not care to go out in general society; but ere called ”Souls” I do not know
The fashi+onable--as called the ”smart set”--of those days centred round the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII, and had Newmarket for its head-quarters As far as I could see, there wasworld than I had ever observed a the Souls; and the first and only time I went to Newmarket the welcome extended to me by the shrewd and select company there made e or baccarat and our rather intellectual and literary after-dinner games were looked upon as pretentious
Arthur Balfour--the uished of the Souls and idolised by every set in society--was the person who drew the ene us and it was considered an iauide and critic Nearly all the young men in my circle were clever and becaent, were less worldly than their fashi+onable conteuished to look at
What interestsback now at those ten years is the loyalty, devotion and fidelity which we showed to one another and the pleasure which we derived from friendshi+ps that could not have survived a week had they been acco, or any personal pettiness Most of us had a depth of feeling andin the clever young a the news,” for instance, was an entertaineneration before the war It consisted of two people acting together and conveying to their audience various ways in which they would receive the news of the sudden death of a friend or a relation and was considered extraordinarily funny; it would never have a, detecting and exposing as ridiculous in simple people and the unkind and irreverent raht--which the young group called ”anticant”--encouraged hard sayings and light doings, which would have profoundly shocked theus Brilliance of a certain kind ether for a; and the young, hard pre-war group that I a of was short-lived
The present Lord Curzon [Footnote: Earl Curzon of Kedleston] also drew the enemy's fire and was probably more directly responsible for the name of the Souls than any one