There is in the human intellect an insatiable eagerness and an indomitable energy of acquisitiveness. It carries in its consciousness an ineradicable instinct of domination, that spurs it to boundless enterprise and prompts it to spurn defeat. This lordly quality of the human mind is the natural outcome of its sovereignty over the physical creation, and the appropriate expression of its kinship with the Creator. It is part of man's Divine birthright, and the insignia of his nobility. But it brings with it the peril of all special prerogative, the inevitable temptation that accompanies the possession of power. It tends to breed a haughtiness that is restive of restraint, a self-sufficiency that forgets its own boundaries, and an arrogance that refuses to wield the sceptre of aught but an unlimited empire. So it comes to pass, when reason in its restless research is brought to a stop by the invisible but very actual confines of human knowledge, it resents the suggestion of limitation, and declines to accept the arrest of its onward march. The temptation that besets it is twofold. On the one hand, pride, irritated by the check, but too clear-sighted to ignore it, is tempted to refuse to admit any truths it cannot fathom or substantiate, and to deny the real existence of any realm of being beyond its natural ken. This is the characteristic error of Rationalism and Positivism. On the other hand, there is in the opposite direction a tendency, born equally of intellectual pride and self-will, to refuse the restriction, to ignore reason's incapacity, and so to venture to state and explain that which is inexplicable. Alike in the spheres of science and of religion men strive recklessly to remove from God's face the veil which His own hand has not drawn, and irreverently intrude into mysteries hopelessly beyond human thought to conceive or human speech to express. This is the transgression of rash speculation and of arrogant dogmatism, and it is in itself as sinful, and in its consequences as harmful, as are the blank negations of scepticism.