78 TWO THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 



quences, whatever these may be and whatever 

 they may involve for the proudest aspirations of 

 mankind only thus can truth be attained. And 

 lest any should say that we preach an unrelieved 

 pessimism, let us remind such that Knowledge is not 

 after all the source of Life, that another category 

 and a different principle that, namely, which we 



x indicate under the term Love-divine must have 

 generated the potent current of Life, and that no 

 one should close the door against the hopes of the 

 human Intelligence until he has discovered what 

 are the limits imposed upon what Perfect Love 

 can do. 



The question still remains whether mankind will 

 be equal to the effort required to assimilate the 

 essential truth. They very nearly failed to as- 

 similate the Copernican cosmogony. For sixteen 

 hundred years after it was first offered to mankind 

 the race preferred to grope in the darkness and 

 confinement of a false conception. 



If they succeed in .accomplishing the reception 

 of the new truth, unheard-of progress may be looked 

 for. If they fail, civilisation must disappear and 

 humanity decline. There is no middle course. As 

 Bacon remarked, in this theatre of man's life it is 



v reserved only to God and angels to be lookers-on. 

 We know how stubbornly the Ptolemaic cosmo- 



