What is the ultimate test of the value of knowledge, but its usefulness to Humanity? And is it not worse than waste of time to pursue studies by which Humanity is not benefited nearly or remotely? Specialists prosecute their several studies too absolutely. The field of knowledge can only be relatively known, and the direction of their mind "to facts and abstract theories, and not to persons or human_interests," is fraught with great mental and moral perils. There is a knowledge of Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, and of Biology, which is no knowledge-a knowledge which is useless to man and for man. That knowledge is purely speculative. "There is but one step from a speculative to an idle life," said Cardinal Paleotti, and experience proves it. There are Mathematicians who lead "an idle life," discussing the possibility of a Mathematics of four dimensions; the magnitudes and distances of a theologico-metaphysico space.

There are Astronomers who, pointing their telescopes to the stars, spend "an idle life" discoursing of universesfor a modern astronomer has made the astounding discovery of more than one universe, impossible as it may appear, and in speculating upon the probability of the moon and other worlds being inhabited by human beings, who differ humanly from ourselves.

There are Physicists and Chemists, not content with terrestrial physics and chemistry, who lead "an idle life" examining the chemical constituents of the atmospheres or photospheres of the fixed stars and worlds which in no way affect ours, and which are so remote as frequently to awaken our doubts of their very existence. There are also Biologists, whose speculations about the origin of species, descent of man from ascidians through apes, are idle, and which benefit science only in a secondary way. Even the "Evolution" theory threatens to become idly speculative, and to be of little utility, as Scientists confine it to that region of the unknowable, the genesis of man from inferior organisms.

Mr. Lewes has said: "Knowledge of what things are under observed conditions may be absolute; it can never lead to more than hypothetical statements of what things were under other conditions; and, since it is manifestly impossible that we should ever know what were the exact conditions under which organic life emerged, we can do no more than guess at origins.”

It was a wise axiom of Hippocrates that Art is long, Life fleeting, and it is one we ought constantly to bear in mind. Knowledge exists for man, not man for knowledge. Knowledge is not a mere catalogue of unrelated facts, nor even of related facts. Knowledge is the product of assimilated related facts. There are tens of thousands of facts which cannot be assimilated, and would be of little use if they could, so little, so very little, do they bear upon human thought and action.

The problem of Positivism is to find what knowledge is of most worth, and its work is tested by its theoretical and practical use. For example, meteorological laws, if they can be ascertained, will be of practical as well as theoretical utility but the inquiry as to what the atmosphere of Sirius may be, or the photosphere of any of the fixed stars, is idle, and therefore useless to Humanity. The same may be said of many similar inquiries.

"Diderot was profoundly conscious that the mere accumulation of knowledge of the directly physical facts of the universe would take men a very short way towards reconstruction. And he struck the keynote in such admirable passages as this: 'One consideration especially that we ought never to lose sight of is that, if we ever banish man, or the thinking and contemplative being, from above the surface of the earth, this pathetic and sublime spectacle of nature becomes no more than a scene of melancholy and silence. The universe is dumb; the darkness and the silence of the night take possession of it.... It is the presence of man that gives its interest to the existence of other beings; and what better object can we set before ourselves in the history of these beings than to accept such a consideration? Why shall we not introduce man into our work in the same place he holds in the universe? Why shall we not make him a common centre? Is there in infinite space any other point from which we can with greater advantage draw those immense lines that we propose to extend to all other points? What a vivid and softening re-action must result between man and the beings by whom he is surrounded!.. Man is the single term from which we ought to set out, and to which we ought to trace all back, if we would please, interest, touch, even in the most arid reflections and the driest details. If you take away my own existence and the happiness of my fellows, of what concern to me is all the rest of nature?" U. Morley.)

Positivism is, as we said, a Subjective, not an Objective, unity. As a specimen of the Objective unity Scientists are seeking to establish, we have only to remember that Mr. Huxley has spoken, apparently not in jest, of every question, whether moral or physical, as being merely a question of Molecular Physics. Supposing they were, what then? How could it serve human life? Well may Mr. Frederic Harrison say that some men are molecular-mad. Supposing the search of Specialism for an ultimate principle attainable, and that principle was Molecular Physics, what then? "It could not help us if we knew it; and, as Aristotle says of Plato's idea, the highest principle would contain none under it."

Mr. Huxley would like, he says, to examine the viscus of the authors (or author) of " Priest in Absolution." Does he think that they are formed physically different to other men? That product can be examined sociologically, but not by the dissecting knife or scalpel. Suppose the said authors should like to see the viscus of the author of "Man's Place in Nature," wherein it is endeavoured to be shown that man differs as much (or more) from man than man from the ape. What then? Should we be able to diagnose Mr. Huxley's moral condition from it?

All real knowledge can be of "The Relative" only-of that which concerns Man or Humanity—and even of that knowledge man can have but a very relative acquaintance, and that knowledge is of most worth the pursuit of which is dominated by social purpose. Indeed, all other knowledge, much as its professors may vaunt its value, is of little worth. An Absolute knowledge of the order of Nature being impossible, it is granted, or at least implied, that an Objective Synthesis is impossible also. And experience proves that there is no one law under which all cosmic and sociological phenomena can be brought; that physics will not explain biology and morals any more than these will explain physics. The phenomena are disparate, and all the attempts of mathematicians and physicists to show that they are not so have failed, and will fail. The modern evolution theory will fail as utterly to explain man and the world as the theories of the Greek geometers who sought to explain them by air, fire, and water, or the more recent attempt of the illustrious Descartes to explain them by atoms and vortices. The two things are disparate, and cannot be compared. Man is not the world, nor the world man, The

world will not explain man, nor man the world. The me and not-me remain, in science as in metaphysics, totally distinct. There is the world (the object or not-me), and there is man (the subject or me). The two things exist in all thoughts, and form all conception; that is, two factors are to be found in all knowledge-the objective and the subjective, the objective facts being interpreted subjectively. Man makes of cosmic phenomena a Subjective Synthesis, the synthesis being constantly corrected and enlarged as his knowledge increases, so as to render it a truer and truer reflex of the external order. All conceptions of that order must be subjective, as we can never know what the order is objectively-that is, in itself. It may answer to our synthetical conceptions of it, or it may not. Our synthesis is ideal, made up of what appears to us to be real—i.e., knowledge of objects.

The difference between a modern scientist and a Greek geometer is that the former (although by no means so encyclopædic a thinker as the latter) has more knowledge of the order of nature. In intellectual power a Greek geometer was probably superior to a modern scientist. However this may be, both have to explain the same facts or appearances. Both have to interpret what they see, taste, handle, and feel, and both must do so subjectively. Objective phenomena can only be so known. This duality characterises all knowledge; man and the world are ever in presence of each other, and man cannot be understood apart from his milieu any more than the milieu can be understood apart from man. All religions have had for their main object to explain this relation of the world and man, man and the world, whether these religions be Fetichism, Polytheism, Monotheism, or Positivism. In all religions the subjective method has been and is used, and the difference between the first and the last consists in this, that in Positivism the subjective method works with objective materials (ie., knowledge, or experiences of phenomena, individual and collective, compared and correlated), knowledge not obtained in Fetichist times. Fetichism interpreted all phenomena upon the hypothesis of Will, and Positivism upon the hypothesis of Law. Both Will and Law are subjective conceptions, and the conception of law is preferred by modern scientists to that of will, because it explains the external order more completely and more rationally, and it can be verified.

It is not enough that we grant that the Relative method should prevail in the theoretical domain; it must prevail also in the practical domain. We must not grant one thing to be true in the abstract, and omit to consider it as equally true in the concrete. There is nothing true abstractly which is not true also concretely. Abstractions are only ideals of concretes, and depend upon their reality for their truth. What is true of science is equally true of art—its practical application. The intellect may assent to the proposition that all knowledge is Relative, and the life and practice deny it. They should accord. Our endeavour in this lecture is to show that it is only in so far as they do accordonly in so far as precept and practice agree that noble living, or indeed true living, is possible. Disciples of Absolute creeds (whether these creeds be theological or, as in modern times, theologico-metaphysical) may be guilty of inconsistency, and sometimes even of hypocrisy; but disciples of the Relative have no excuse for such conduct. Their theory and practice ought ever to converge and be in harmony. All divergencies will not only be more glaring than in the old creeds, but more injurious, mentally and morally; for the priests of the old creeds, by the exercise of their practical good sense, counteracted the evils of many of the Absolute doctrines. The Religion of Humanity founded by Comte may be truly called the religion of Relativism, for it discards all absolute objects of worship, and sets up one which is both objective and subjective, for it has the property of being both real and ideal in the best

-that is, in the scientific — sense. The Religion of Humanity not only shows how all knowledge may be coordinated, but it shows also what knowledge is of most worth, and how such knowledge may be made the means of promoting individual and collective well being.

The laws of nature, as Comte reminds us, are plural, not singular. Look where man will, he finds the Human Order in strict subordination to the External Order. For man depends on the world, and not the world on man. The world is necessary to man, but the world itself could do without man. This statement of the scientific fact shows us what a road we have travelled from Theologism and its old way of regarding the world as made for man and as a central object in space, for which all the other worlds were made. No wonder Catholicism opposed with all its might the Copernican theory, and maintained, as well as it was

able, the old Ptolemaic theory. It was wise in its generation. It saw with eagle glance what a fundamental re-casting Theologism would need should the theory be adopted, and what tremendous consequences its adoption would finally entail upon the Universal Church, with all its glorious traditions of noble and saintly men and women, its magnificent services, ritual and liturgy-aye, and upon even civilisation itself. The point of view is everything. Once shift it, and the work of centuries is rendered useless. And Catholicism did wisely. It set a higher value upon right conduct than upon right thinking, and in doing so it ought to have the grateful recognition, not only of Positivists, but of all good men. Catholicism was a great social and religious organisation of incalculable good to mankind in its palmy days, and it was bound to resist new intellectual truth when that truth jeopardised social well-being; and the Copernican theory was not so true then as it is to us now, it having since been verified a thousand times. Still the majority of men will speak in the old Ptolemaic way of the sun rising and setting, and continue to do so for ages

to come.

As has already been said, the world could and did exist without man; and man is no consequence of the world, though he depends upon it. Since, then, a subjective synthesis must be formed, what shall be the central object of that synthesis? Not the individual, surely! Having done with a celestial egoism, we are not about to substitute a terrestrial one. It were better in every way, for moral as well as intellectual gain, to go back upon the old one than do that. Will not the dogma of Humanity answer the purpose? That the human heart must have an object to love and revere is as true as two and two make four. It has been so always, and will always be so. Mankind has never done without a religion, and never will. Such being the case, seeing what a potent factor in human wellbeing Humanity is, can we do better than centre in her all our thoughts, as well as all our aspirations? But, it may be said, what is Humanity? Is it aught but a figment of the brain? And in what way, if she be a real being, do we owe her gratitude and praise? Why should she, in fine, be the central dogma of our subjective synthesis? Let us ask, around whom else will you centre your thoughts and feelings but this human providence that, throughout the ages, consciously or unconsciously, spontaneously or systematically,