COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



place, are generalizations drawn from a peculiar 

 and temporary phase of society and illegitimately 

 extended to all phases of society ; and, in the 

 second place, even so far as they go, they have 

 but a limited applicability — expressing at best 

 certain aspects of intellectual and industrial pro- 

 gress, but leaving quite out of sight that slow 

 moral evolution which underlies the whole. 

 Whatever of truth is contained in these state- 

 ments is also contained in the formula which I 

 am here expounding, and is much more accu- 

 rately expressed in the terms of that formula. 

 Scepticism, for instance, in the best sense of the 

 word, is the attitude of mind which is caused by 

 the perception that certain inner psychical rela- 

 tions — say, a given set of beliefs or institutions 

 — have ceased to be adapted to outer relations. 

 The mediaeval conception of the world, as pre- 

 sented in Dante's treatise on " The Monarchy," 

 was very closely adapted both to the knowledge 

 and to the social needs of the time. The concep- 

 tion of man as the centre of a universe made 

 solely for his use and behoof, with a sun to give 

 him light by day and a moon and stars to give 

 him. light by night, with an Emperor and a Pope 

 divinely appointed to rule him in this life, and 

 an Autocrat in heaven uniting in himself the 

 functions of these two, and ruling nature accord- 

 ing to his arbitrary will ; this conception, I say, 

 was in harmony both with the best science and 

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