PHILOSOPHY AND SPECIALTIES. 
5 
is impossible—that one which requires ascertained fact to 
be the basis for any averment. The simple expression of 
historic truth on the subject is—all that once claimed to be 
science was mythology. An unconscious admission of its 
atavistic recurrence in its grand division of daimonology 
may be noticed in the recent adoption of the term theosophy 
by the votaries of that sciolism. A similar recurrence, per¬ 
haps to be classed as a recrudescence, is to be observed in the 
recent use of the term “ Christian Science ” with a thera¬ 
peutic sense. 
An opposite scholastic system, which dominated its era, 
was based on the tenet that intuitions should decide on the 
nature of things and their perfect and creative type, which 
was to be ascertained, not from observed data, but from 
man’s own ideals. Since the examination of a sound mind 
in a sound body was difficult, the greatest teacher was he 
who had most enormously tumefied what now in Teutonic 
fashion is called “ inner-consciousness ” and could exhibit 
its morbidity with the most pretentious diagnosis. Subject 
to this leadership in introspection every man was his own 
universe. Though specimens of such fossil concepts are still 
preserved in strongly bound folios they are curiosities not 
found in the working libraries of science. 
The first-mentioned school sought to understand this world 
by hypnotic communion with another world; the second 
taught that the best way for an observer to see was to shut 
his eyes and think about sight. 
When, therefore, no attention was paid to facts as such, 
and all knowledge was either a commentary on revelation 
or a ratiocination on self, it was not extremely difficult to 
know everything. To-day the pretender to universal knowl¬ 
edge would be denounced as knowing naught. This judg¬ 
ment is carried to an extreme. Even the exceptional minds 
whose multiplied facets scintillate brightness in diverse 
angles, are denied glory as light-bringers on every line 
successively by higher authorities on each of the lines of 
light. 
