Now lest it be said that such an outline applies mainly to 

 a course of scientific instruction, we remark that the methods 

 which are applicable and to be recommended in such a course, 

 are in the main those which may be followed with advantage in 

 the pursuit of knowledge in any direction. Knowledge is ad- 

 vancing along many different lines, but the greatest progress is 

 after all being made in the study of nature. The physical sci- 

 ences during the last half century have been developed to an 

 extent not dreamed of in the past, while metaphysical studies 

 have been relegated to a subordinate place, and some of these 

 studies have made little or no progress during the centuries 

 The reason is not hard to find. We have learned to distinguish 

 those things which may be known from those which are, from 

 their very nature, unknowable ; that which may be proved 

 from that which is always in dispute, and we have learned to 

 separate those collections of clearly related facts which may be 

 systematically arranged, and from which general principles and 

 laws may be deduced from those unwieldy masses of half- 

 truths which may be differently viewed from any standpoint, 

 and which can never be brought together in compact form, or 

 scientifically treated. Underlying the physical sciences is a 

 substratum of facts from which we derive laws, but in most of 

 those studies which are commonly classed under metaphysics 

 using the term in its broadest sense, we find no corresponding 

 basis of universally accepted truths, and as the workers in such 

 branches are seldom agreed as to the meaning of the very terms 

 which they employ, exact discussion becomes well-nigh impossi- 

 ble. Take theology, for instance. I speak not of practical re- 

 ligion, but of the science so called, and what do we find but 

 that the theologians are each from his own standpoint, and 

 with all the bias which inherited beliefs or irrationally adopted 

 creeds give, discussing fundamental propositions which have 

 been argued for centuries, and concerning which scarce two dis- 

 putants are in accord. Nothing is farther from my purpose 

 than to speak slightingly of religious beliefs which have in one 

 form or another been held by all nations and at all times, be- 

 liefs that have influenced the life and made for righteousness, 

 for I refer alone to theology as treated in the schools, where ar- 

 guments are based on propositions incapable of proof, and terms 

 to which no fixed meaning can be assigned are used as if capa- 

 ble of logical employment and with scientific precision. The 



