and metaphysical schemes, from Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, to Herbert Spencer, and Mr. Mallock, cannot give us any knowledge in which they mutually agree. Mr. Mallock sums up philosophy as a necessity to the mind. We _must_ believe in some theory of mind, some religion, some philosophy, else life is dreary and unlivable. This appears to be the result of his book "The Veil of the Temple," and this is simply the doctrine of utility. But no philosopher, can tell us why mind works on certain lines and not on others, because they cannot tell us definitely that they _know_ what mind is. Mind is a function of _Matter: Matter_ is a function of thought: Mind is Noumenon the unseen and unknown, as contrasted with Phenomena the seen and known; the universe, the creation of the mind; the mind, the product of the universe. All these ideas and many others so widely differing can none of them receive a demonstrable proof;--these contrary statements show how far we are from possessing any real knowledge of what mind is. After all that has been written, elaborated and imagined, do we actually _know_ more than Omar Khayam knew? "There was the door to which I found no key; There was the veil through which I could not see; Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee There was--and then no more of Thee and Me." Philosophy is still powerless to tell us what mind is; the self, the ego always vanishes as we seem to be nearing it, it always eludes our deepest probings--we only demonstrate our failure in regard to our knowledge of it. All this is true, but should we therefore despair? If we are born with the record on the brain of the inexorable desire to _know_, the very failure should stimulate us to further, and greater, and more fruitful questionings. II. CONTRASTS. CARLYLE, GEORGE ELIOT, MAZZINI, BROWNING, All contrasts drawn between writers, and thinkers should have for aim the setting forth of some striking and fundamental difference in thought, and it would be hard to find anywhere a greater and a more vivid contrast than that between Carlyle and George Eliot. For George Eliot's philosophy was centred in the well-being of the Race. Carlyle's was summed up in the worth of the Individual. George Eliot teaches in prose and still more in poetry that Personality, with its hopes, loves, faiths, aspirations, must all be relinquished, and its agonies and pains endured, should Humanity gain by the sacrifice and the endurance. She considers the Individual as part of collective humanity, and that he does not live for himself, he has no continuance of personal life, he has no permanence, except as a living influence on the Race. This is the Positivist creed, the Racial Creed. Beyond the influence that it exerts, spiritual personality is doomed. It is not humanity in God but humanity in itself which is to exist from age to age, solely in the memory of succeeding generations.