1 90 Spiritual Evolution of Society 



We are entitled to say that to-day the men of the 

 highest intellectual gifts demand the Deity as a neces- 

 sity of thought. We know this statement will be denied, 

 and we are well aware that there still exist scientific men 

 who retain the agnostic position, but it must be ad- 

 mitted that great scientific attainment is not neces- 

 sarily accompanied with high intellectual capacity or 

 power of the imaginative faculty, and hence the satis- 

 faction with the purely material. Moreover, the ab- 

 sorption in dead matter and natural law unfortunately 

 seems to produce a cast of thought which cannot get 

 beyond the purely mechanical, and so the higher 

 faculties of the mind become blind and unappreciative 

 of the other phenomena around them— of consciousness, 

 thought, spirit, the search after the " Ideal," the 

 beauty of art, poetry, literature, the permanence of 

 intellect in contrast to the decay of matter. They always 

 profess to followTruth and cry aloud," Magna est Veritas 

 et praevalebit," which is excellent and most desirable, 

 but not, when only one aspect is presented to us. The 

 true man of science not only sees the earth beneath 

 him, but looks around and above and takes cognisance 

 of every impression which humanity can convey, and 

 it is from such only that we can accept with reverence 

 ideas as to men and things, the laws of Nature, the 

 Cosmos, and the Eternal. The mere statement that 

 beyond finite knowledge there are " unknown and 

 unknowable possibilities " conveys nothing to us ; it 

 is arrogant and ought never to be made. He is quite 

 entitled to suppose the unknowable possibilities, but 

 as a man of science he has no right to state it posi- 

 tively. We are entitled to ask him, why he endeavours 

 to follow a law of righteousness, why he is unhappy 

 when he violates it ; how or when did he acquire a 

 conscience ? Are consciousness, thought, conscience, 

 the law of righteousness, not as important as gravita- 



