82 METAPHYSICS 



the present individuality, moulding all forms of possible 

 appearances and forms of superior beings or existences 

 and personalities on human lines, and culminating in the 

 representation of the personality of the Supreme Being 

 on essentially the same human lines and principles. 



We must ever be prepared to recognise that there are 

 more things in our philosophy than have yet been dreamt 

 of, and that it behoves us habitually, as time goes on, to 

 adapt it to the present state of knowledge, and only to 

 abandon it at the stage when its apparent boundaries have 

 been reached. These boundaries, at different periods of the 

 world's past history, have been sometimes almost indelibly 

 marked by the erection of seemingly indestructible and 

 most elaborately constructed monuments and temples, 

 and other means for allowing the reunion of the still 

 living and eternal spirit with the long since dead and 

 temporal body ; at times they have been marked by less 

 material or ponderous methods of signifying belief in 

 continued existence of soul as a component, but merely 

 passive, part of a universal whole ; while at other times 

 the ingenuity of the devotees of particular cults, dogmas, 

 and doctrines have elaborated services and liturgies 

 dedicated to the service and worship of the Supreme 

 Being, amid displays of sensuous trappings and belongings 

 which have employed the energies of a lifetime to gain 

 an expert knowledge of, and which have required for 

 their propagation and upholding whole armies of the 

 best manhood of the various countries of the world in 

 which they have been evolved and flourished. No doubt, 

 to many of these so-called sacred institutions and holy 

 men the world owes a great debt of gratitude for holding 

 aloft the torch of knowledge and spreading the influences 

 of civilisation, when all around the forces of superstition, 

 vice, ignorance, and error have been mustered for, and 

 ardently intent on, their undoing and annihilation. 



Now, however, that a natural ally, in the form of what 

 may be called the army of science, is becoming possessed 

 of a system of truth, of laws founded thereon, of an 

 active and expert propaganda, and of hosts of far-seeing 

 leaders, we are persuaded that the time is rapidly coming, 

 if it has not indeed already come, when the two forces of 



