of detachment which is used to disentangle them) are due most of the illusions, impostures, and superstitions, of the world. It is because children cannot detach the law from the circumstance or thing to which it is for the time being wedded, that they imagine the virtue and beauty to be in their toys and dolls, which exist only in their own minds; and it is for the same reason that the youth imagines he sees that far-off and rainbow-like charm in the girl of his fancy, which he himself lends to her. In like manner, it is because men cannot detach the man from the position he occupies, that we have had in history the basest and most contemptible of creatures worshipped as deities, and that, too, by men who, as reward for this pleasing illusion, have been whipped and trampled on from youth to age, to gratify the avarice, passions, or caprice of the despots themselves have made. It is because men cannot detach the man from the occupation-the owner of land, for example, from his land—the man engaged in trade, from his shop-that you have that recognized difference of nature and kind among men, which has become embedded like a tape-worm in the brain of the Old World, and which not only has kept the great masses of the people willing serfs, from the dawn of history down to within the last few centuries, but would, if not extracted, have continued to keep them so until the end of time. It is because men cannot detach the fact from the phrases which overlay and disguise it, the thought from the expression in which it is wrapped up and concealed, that you have flashy scoundrelism pushing homely honesty to the wall, the posing charlatan bearing away the palm from the simple lover of truth, the blatant and unblushing demagogue driving the serious statesman from the helm. It is because men cannot detach their feelings from the objects with which in time and place they have been associated and bound up, that you have men persecuting each other because the same happiness and bliss which the one feels in contemplating the fatherhood of God, the character of Christ, or the joys of

Heaven, another feels in bending before the will of Allah, in contemplating the character of Mahomet, or the Paradise to which he invites him. It is because men cannot or will not detach their perceptions from their feelings, that you have the laudator temporis acti; that you have men's philosophies, as Goethe said, but the mere supplement of their practice, so that what they love they tend to laud, what they hate they tend to depreciate, what they would like to do they think they may do, and what they are in the habit of doing they believe it right they should do. It is because men cannot detach themselves from the occupation in which they are engaged, that they become subdued to the element they work in, and in the greater number of instances the experienced eye can predict from a man's appearance what is his occupation, and from his occupation what is the general range and configuration of his sentiments and ideas.

The above are a few familiar instances of the illusions into which men fall who neglect to exercise that power of detachment which is the main instrument by which the laws of the human mind are to be disengaged from the circumstances in which they are wrapped up. And it is to these illusions that a large part of the evils, the injustices, the trials, the heartburnings, the misunderstandings and chronic discontents of life are directly traceable. I do not mean to imply that it might have been otherwise; on the contrary, I perceive, and shall show further on, that only in the far future can we expect it to be different. I would merely remark here, that it is only the 'education' which will teach men to know the laws of the human mind and to see through illusions, that can help them to remove the ills of life, not the mere pedantry which is about all that is usually implied in the term; and further that just as a man's power of detachment is the best index of his rank in the scale of intelligence, so, too, in proportion to the general diffusion of this power throughout a society or a nation, is the stage of civilization it has reached.

To illustrate still further the importance of a knowledge of the laws of the human mind as a concrete entity, for the higher problems of life, I had originally intended to have pointed out in this chapter the utopias into which some of the greatest thinkers have fallen, from the want of knowledge, or neglect, of these laws; but on remembering that in future chapters I shall have occasion to controvert certain doctrines held by some of the most eminent of these thinkers, I have judged it expedient to pass them by in this place. I shall, however, in the next chapter, give one more instance of the errors into which men fall, from the neglect of the great laws of the human mind, as, by doing this, I shall not only still futher illustrate the importance of these laws, but shall perhaps help to remove objections and prejudices which would otherwise stand in the way of those doctrines and laws which I desire to establish in a future chapter.

CHAPTER VII.

SUPERNATURALISM versus SCIENCE.

THE particular errors to which I alluded in the last chapter will be best seen, perhaps, by a general contrast between what may be termed respectively Supernaturalism and Science; between those who hold that some revelation has been given to the world by a person or persons supernaturally sent or inspired and those who, like myself, believe that the only revelation the Supreme Power has given to man is the laws of the world and of the human mind. And in order that I may do no injustice to Supernaturalism in this comparison, I propose to take, as typical instance of it, the most coherent and intelligent form it has yet assumed, the form that is accepted by the most cultured minds, and that offers the fewest points of antagonism to modern thought; the form, in a word, that will best exemplify its true essence, freed from all those superstitions, impurities, and adhesions which are so obnoxious to the culture and enlightenment of the present day. Now, if we represent to ourselves in thought the respective exponents of these opposite views of the world, at the outset of their journey in search of Truth, we shall find that those feelings and necessities of the mind which it is their object to harmonize, are alike in both. Each starts forth equipped, on the one hand, with Conscience, and on the other, with the demand for Cause the one being an affection of the feelings, the other a necessity of pure thought. But they do not get far on their way before it becomes apparent that, although neither Supernaturalist nor Scientist altogether ignores either of these two affections of the mind, the Supernaturalist lays more stress on the feeling the conscience; the Scientist more stress on the

thought the cause. And from this primal difference in the emphasis laid on thought and sentiment respectively, flow those subsequent divergencies which, widening as they go, at last become entirely antagonistic and irreconcilable. Let us follow for a moment our Supernaturalist and Scientist, and see how they fare as they pursue each his several way.

The Supernaturalist, with a natural leaning to piety and devoutness, feeling acutely the inward unrest, the remorse, the discord, which the consciousness of Sin and the conflict between his higher and lower nature have made habitual; yearning for deliverance from this unnatural condition, from this inward discord, this sense of longing and aspiration unsatisfied and unappeased; feels, by the deepest intuition of his mind, that there can be no desire implanted in the human breast but has its natural satisfaction somewhere; that the yearning of the child no more surely pre-supposes the mother's breast; hunger and thirst, food and water; the sexes, their opposites; and the bird his mate; than this restless yearning of the soul pre-supposes, somewhere in the wide world, if one could only find it, the provision for inward harmony and rest. On looking about him for some sign or token that shall lead him to the desired object, he feels that this sense of Sin in his own members, this Evil and misery in the world, must be referred to some commensurate cause, and to what else can it be referred but to some supernatural Evil Power or Devil, in whose chains, though struggling to be free, both he and it lie bound and captive. At the same time, he recognises that this very effort and desire to be free, this inward aspiration to good, as well as the bounteous provision of Nature for man's wants which he sees around him, necessitate a belief in some Good Power, or God, to whom alone they can legitimately be referred. But if this were all, if his inward unrest were due to the conflict of two opposing deities for his soul, there would be nothing for him (seeing that the Evil Power would seem to be in possession, and to have the strongest hold over him), but,