“As Humanity will be the sole Ideal Object to which dutiful obligation and exalted sentiment will be referred, so the world of Humanity will be the world revealed, not by divine inspiration or metaphysical intuition, but by Positive Science The shadowy abstractions of the speculative rationalist, the fanciful conceptions of the theologian, will gradually pass away. To the Semitic explanation of the world and of man will succeed that of Laplace and Darwin. The great and majestic truths of the stellar universe, the mysteries of life, of light, of heat, of sound; the wonders of natural history, the magic of geologic lore, the epic of man’s progression in time; the exaltation, the solace, the delight which flow from poetry, music, painting, sculpture; the interest in the arts, industrial no less than æsthetic; in the fellowship of work which ameliorates the common lot; in friendships of man and woman, short of passionate love, and in the happier profounder affection of wife and husband; in all home charities and patriotic activities, and in the identification of personal ‘feelings with the entire life of the human race’;—all these incidents of thought and varieties of emotion and action will possess the intellect and fill the heart of future generations, in a mode and degree which we can now only imperfectly realise, and which, in the end, will leave men but little reason to regret that the raptures of saint or prophet, or the splendours of ancient theocracy, or the power and glory of the Mediæval Church, or the imposing premise of Hellenic or of Teutonic speculation, are as the dreams of a night that has passed forever away.” Have we, in this prophetic conclusion, the afterglow of a faith sunk beneath the horizon? Why should we suppose that such beautiful things will come to pass in the future? Such prophecies have hitherto been inspired by belief in an overruling and omnipotent Love. But we are now brought by science and philosophy to the misgiving of Solomon, “We are born at all adventure.” Things, the sceptic may say, will grow better if man compels them so, otherwise they can as easily grow worse.