SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 15 



any rational man who looked into these things 

 could have but one opinion about them, and that 

 was that we neither could, nor need endeavour, 

 to know anything about God, our souls, a future 

 life, or other such vain speculations of theologians 

 and philosophers. This attitude is the very atmos- 

 phere in which the book was created, and which 

 it exhales to those who read it to-day. And yet it 

 was but a time and not the Day of Judgment. 

 " Few people," says Mr. Chesterton in continu- 

 ation of the text already cited, " few people for 

 instance, realize that a time may easily come when 

 we shall see the great outburst of science in the 

 nineteenth century as something quite as splendid, 

 brief, unique, and ultimately abandoned as the 

 outburst of art at the Renaissance. Few people 

 realize that the general habit of fiction, of telling 

 tales in prose, may fade, like the general habit of 

 the ballad, of telling tales in verse, has for the time 

 faded. Few people realize that reading and writing 

 are only arbitrary sciences like heraldry." All that 

 he suggests, even any part of it, seems to us, if not 

 impossible at least incredible, but it is as well to 

 remind ourselves that all things mundane pass, 

 and that what we to-day think of as final, is not 

 necessarily or even probably so. And so after the 

 splendid assurance of the mid-Victorian period, 

 that everything was to be known the day after 

 to-morrow if not sooner, comes the reaction of to- 

 day. Of this we have recently been told in a 

 magistral address, the great tendency, the " char- 

 acteristic of the promising, though perturbing 

 period in which we live," is " rapid progress, 



