Similarly, in the best days of scholastic learning scientific inquiry ran back for a secure foundation to the authentic ordinances of the Heavenly King; under the discipline of the era of handicraft it learned instead to push its inquiries to the ground of efficient cause, ultimately of course, in the philosophical liquidation of accounts in that devout age, to the creative efficiency of the First Cause. In the scientific inquiries of the earlier age the test of truth was the test of authenticity, and the logic of systematisation by use of which knowledge in that time was digested and stored away was essentially a logic of subsumption under securely authentic categories that could be run back at need to the ascertained requirements of the glory of God. The canon of truth is that of the revealed word, reënforced and filled out with the quasi-divine Aristotelian scheme of things. It is a logic of hierarchical congruity in respect of potencies and qualities, suggestively resembling the devolution of powers and dignities under the finished scheme of feudalism. In the later age the good of man gradually, insensibly supplants the glory of God as the ultimate ground of systematisation. The sentimental ground of conviction comes to be the recognised serviceability of the ascertained facts for human use, rather than their conformity with the putative exigencies of a self-centred divine will. The Providential Order that means so much in the scheme of knowledge in the mature years of the era of handicraft is an order imposed by a providentially beneficent Creator who looks to the good of man; as it has been expressed, it is a scheme of “humanism.”