Constructiveness is an education which attains success but slowly. Some men have no distinctive notion whatever of truth. It seems never to have occurred to them that there is anything intrinsic in it, and they only fall into it by accident. Others have a wholesome idea that truth is essential, and that, as a rule, you ought to tell it, and some do it. This is a small conception of truth, but it is good as far as it goes, and ought to be valued, as it is scarce. If any one asks such a person whether what he says is what he _thinks_, or what he _knows_, to be true, he is perplexed. The difference between the two things has not occurred to him. He has been under the impression that what he believes is the same thing as what he knows, and when he finds the two things are very different, his idea of truth is doubled and is twice as large as it was before. There is yet a larger view, to which many never attain. To them all truth is truth of equal value. All geese are geese, but all are not equally tender. Though all horses are horses, all are not equally swift. Yet many never observe that all facts are not equally succulent or swift, nor all truth of equal value or usefulness. Social truth has three marks,--it must be explicit, relevant to the question in hand, and of use for the purpose in hand. But it requires some intelligence to observe this, and judgment to act upon it. CHAPTER XV. MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF THEOLOGY "Religion, as dealing with the confessedly incomprehensible, is not the basis for human union, in social, or industrial, or political circles, but only that portion of old religion which is now called moral." --Professor Francis William Newman.