220 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CREED OF SCIENCE. 



up with peculiar aggregations of matter ; but we cannot 

 tell why a brain was necessary or how life came from 

 matter. These are the metaphysical and insoluble 

 questions. Thus finally a knowledge of the sequences 

 and conjunctions of phenomena which constitute science 

 is sufficient to answer all legitimate questions. Such 

 knowledge serves at once to explain the universe, to 

 guide our life, to give man the mastery over Nature, to 

 rule the forces without and within. It will explain the 

 world, ourselves, society ; enable us to assign the natural 

 origin, to show the natural course of evolution, to predict 

 the probable final destiny of each ; and such an explana- 

 tion which, unlike the past metaphysical ones, is both 

 intelligible to the human mind, and likely to lead to 

 profitable practical result ought surely to suffice for men. 

 5. But whether the positive point of view and 

 positive scientific methods are or are not adequate to the 

 solution of all questions of philosophy, they are fully 

 adequate to all the demands of practice. Positive know- 

 ledge, purified from all metaphysical questions, is all that 

 is required for the conduct of the individual life by the 

 individual, or of the collective national life by the states- 

 man or legislator. That there exists only phenomena, 

 and a settled order amongst them which is ascertainable, 

 and which is the best and only safe guide in practice, is 

 all that the moralist, the statesman, the reformer, the 

 philanthropist need postulate. For all these have only to 

 adapt phenomenal means to ends, subject to the ascer- 

 tained order of the phenomena, without other question 

 asked than the suitability of the means to the end, and 

 where, consequently, metaphysical questions, even if they 

 have reality in themselves, do not enter. In all depart- 

 ments of practice we have but to know the established 

 order of sequence and coexistence amongst facts, and to 



