42 The Relativity of Knowledge. 



that which was before harmonic, and therefore good, may 

 become discordant and therefore bad. 



The believer in the Relativity of Knowledge must neces- 

 sarily be a free man mentally. He can listen dispassion- 

 ately to the wildest dreams of Utopia, and say " Yes, when 

 men change in such and such ways your ideal may be real- 

 ized," Mohammedan, Brahmin, Anarchist, Mormon, Spir- 

 itualist, Materialist, Catholic, Protestant, Atheist and The- 

 ist, all alike can tell their story to him, and he will per- 

 ceive that every one of them has ideas that occupy proper 

 places somewhere along the path of the shifting pendulum 

 of relativity. They all occupy, in relation to each other, 

 lower and higher planes of thought, containing some rela- 

 tive truth and a good deal of even relative error. The 

 latter is born of lack of knowledge of facts. The Agnos- 

 tic is a man who is completely disenthralled from the nar- 

 row prejudices so characteristic of his race. He is as earn- 

 est in defending the truth of definite relations as anybody, 

 but he does not fight over the question as to the absolute- 

 ness of such relations. He knows that everything is shift- 

 ing incessantly, and that the truth of to-day may be the 

 error of to-morrow. He has discovered this truth of 

 truths, and realized, in the fullest sense of the words, the 

 exact meaning of that saying of Jesus, <'And ye shall 

 know the truth, and the truth shall make you freer" (John 

 viii., 32.) 



