PREFACE 



conflict, as I have sought to show, is not be- 

 tween Knowledge and Aspiration, but between 

 the less imperfect knowledge of any given age 

 and the more imperfect knowledge of the age 

 which has gone before. For it lies in the nature 

 of progress that the heresy or new knowledge of 

 yesterday is the orthodoxy or old knowledge 

 of to-day, and that to those who have learned 

 to associate their aspirations with the old know- 

 ledge it may well seem impossible that like as- 

 pirations should be associated with the new. 

 But the experience of many ages of speculative 

 revolution has shown that while Knowledge 

 grows and old beliefs fall away and creed suc- 

 ceeds to creed, nevertheless that Faith which 

 makes the innermost essence of religion is inde- 

 structible. Were it not for the steadfast convic- 

 tion that this is so, what could sustain us in 

 dealing with questions so mighty and so awful 

 that one is sometimes fain to shrink from facing 

 their full import, lest the mind be overwhelmed 

 and forever paralyzed by the sense of its no- 

 thingness ? 



Venice, April i6, 1874. 



XV 



