70 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



of their services, the masters of thought, by their mining 

 and quarrying in the secret subterranean regions of 

 thought, not less than by their aspiring nights, if they 

 have not revealed the whole mystery or opened out 

 a tunnel between our world of phenomena and the un- 

 known land beyond, they have, both by their labour and 

 by their failure, shown to us why we cannot reach this 

 transcendent world where repose the real essences of 

 things. They have shown us that our faculties are 

 bounded, even when themselves stretching them to the 

 utmost, even when actually widening them, like Kant. 

 They have shown us the utmost butt and sea-mark of 

 our sail, even when trying to prove that the philosopher's 

 thought is absolute knowledge, like Hegel. They have 

 all confirmed the lesson of our philosopher Locke, to sit 

 down in contented ignorance of knowledge denied to 

 human faculties, even though other beings in the universe 

 may possess it. 



And there have been yet greater men than any of 

 these ; men who have revealed the great possibilities of 

 virtue latent in humanity, as these others its capacity 

 for truth and beauty, and its aspirations to the Un- 

 known. Besides the great discoverers of truth, there 

 have been men who have shown to us what may be 

 dared for truth when discovered the men who have 

 given for truth their blood, and bequeathed to humanity 

 the great traditions which it cannot forget, and dare not 

 fall wholly away from, without accepted dishonour and 

 degradation. There have been the noble army of martyrs 

 for truth, amongst whom science and philosophy are 

 worthily represented. There have been martyrs who, 

 like Socrates and Bruno, have shown that, even when 

 humanity has sunk low, there ever exist individual 

 spirits who redeem it and prevent it from sinking to still 



