A FORECAST. 2? 



or far distances of space, or the remote past or future it is simply throw- 

 ing its rope's end into the sky and trying to climb up ! 



That " the wish is father to the thought " is in its wide sense profound- 

 ly true. In the individual, feeling precedes thinking as the body pre- 

 cedes the clothes. In history, the Rousseau precedes the Voltaire. There 

 is, I believe, a physiological parallel ; for behind the brain and determin- 

 ing its action stands the great sympathetic nerve the organ of the emo- 

 tions. In fact here the brain appears as distinctly transitional. It stands 

 between the nerves of sense on the one hand and the great sympathetic 

 on the other. 



Change the feeling in an individual, and his whole method of thinking 

 will be revolutionised ; change the axiom or primary sensation in a science, 

 and the whole structure will have to be re-created. The current Political 

 Economy is founded on the axiom of individual greed ; but let a new 

 axiomatic emotion spring up (as of justice or fair play instead of unlimited 

 garb), and the base of the science will be altered, and will necessitate a 

 new construction. 



So when people argue (on politics, morality, art, &c. ) it will generally 

 be found that they differ at the base ; they go out, perhaps quite uncon- 

 sciously, from different axioms and hence they cannot agree. Occasionally 

 of course a strict examination will show that, while agreeing at the base, 

 one of them has made a false step in deduction ; in that case his thought 

 does not represent his primary feeling, and when this is pointed out he is 

 forced to alter it. But more often it is found that the difference lies deep 

 down at a point beyond the reach of reason ; and they disagree to the end. 

 In this case neither is right and neither is wrong. They simply feel differ- 

 ently ; they are different persons. 



The thought then is the expression, the outgrowth, the covering, of un- 

 derlying Feeling. And in the great life of Man as a whole, as in the lesser 

 life of the individual, his continual new birth and inward growth causes 

 his thought-systems also continually to change and be replaced by new 

 ones. Like the bud-sheaths and husks in a growing plant or tree they 

 give form for a time to the life within ; then they fall off and are replaced. 

 The husk prepares the bud underneath which is to throw it off. The 

 thought prepares and protects the feeling underneath which growing will 

 inevitably reject it ; and when a thought has been formed it is already 

 false, i.e., ready to fall. 



We are now, then, in a position to come back to the question of a 

 genuine Science, truly so-called. 



As there is no invariable and absolute datum on the fringe of humanity 

 no definable flying atom on which we can found our reasonings and 

 as Modern Science, considered as an actual representation of the universe, 

 falls miserably to pieces in consequence is it possible that we have made 

 a mistake in the direction in which we have sought for our datum ; and 

 may it be that we should look for it in the very Centre of Humanity in- 



