great enigma. The central truth of language is that it is an elaboration of the single principle of motion. In this fact all lines of thought and feeling converge. God is the divine unity of life, of which principle all individual existences are but limited expressions. Every event, every happening, whether human or extra-human, repeats this truth.

Mind, therefore, is the function of conditions which are far wider and deeper than human life; its images, so far as they are not true reflections of this universal order, are deceptive; its perceptions spring from the concurrence of laws which are as independent of consciousness as they are capable of explaining the whole range of mental activity.

Perception accounts for mind, not mind for perception; because perception is a simpler fact than language, and mind is the product of language. The activities of nature express conditions which are merely repeated in the processes of mind, for the simplest activity declares a truth as profound as any of the imaginings of the intellect. In this sense, and only in this sense, nature perceives itself, intelligence is universal.

But man would appropriate the principle of life and knowledge to himself. He would affirm that the infinity and eternity of relations, of which humanity is but the passing form, are subservient to his existence; that every thing happens in reference to himself; and, as the great currents of nature toss him about in his struggle at self-maintenance, he builds a world of phantom beings supposed to be independent of natural processes in order to keep his theories in countenance. As the history of the race progresses, and the mastery of ignorance increases, this burlesque of nature moves further and further into the background of thought, for, as our view of cause and effect is widened, fewer and fewer inconsistencies appear demanding to be clothed in these unearthly forms.

The discovery of the nature of language imparts to us the true knowledge of life. It discloses sensibility and feeling (which are but forms of motion) as inarticulate perception, and thought as an organic activity.

Language is the first fruit of social life. For ages, gestures or expressive motions were employed to eke out the indefinite meaning of words, and where the faculty of speech did not exist or was but slightly developed, gestures have constituted of themselves a rude language. It is the growth of definiteness in language which marks the progress of humanity. In the delicate and intricate articulations of thought we have the only instrument by which man can establish extended relationships between himself and the universe. Thought is not a thing apart from language; the spirit of a race breathes in the words and sentences which have grown up to express the common life, and in the simple laws which govern this development we find written the nature of the thinking being. The nature of a being, its origin and destiny, are revealed in the relations it bears with surrounding life. To adequately express such relations a definiteness of speech, hitherto unattained, is the first requisite; for how are we to weigh in the balance of the mind such fine proportions of thought unless the values of the terms we employ are first clearly distinguished?

The mind, then, is an activity which illuminates existence, exalting the delicacy and range of human relations, and giving to each individual that spirit of universal sympathy which we call morality.

Religion and philosophy are ever offering us symbols of existence, promising clearer views of life. But when we find that these symbols do not harmonize, we are told that there is an innate disorder in the uttermost regions of knowledge, that all analyses lead at last to impenetrable mysteries. And yet the universal measure of success in thought is the establishment of order in the place of disorder, of definite knowledge in the place of mystery. Does it not seem as though this explanation were but a subterfuge?

Ever since man has been able to state categorically his beliefs concerning life and nature, the problem of Motion has occupied the highest place among his thoughts. The effort to solve this problem can be traced in an unbroken thread

from the dawn of philosophy to the present day. The categories of thought in which this problem is stated form the burden of all metaphysical speculations, and the reduction of these categories to the simple fact of Motion gives us the solution of the metaphysical problem.

In the more vague and emotional sphere of religion the same problem is unconsciously dealt with. The First Cause, the most general principle, the one God, or the highest among many gods, is the burden of all theological reasoning. As the attributes of deity become more refined; as they exchange, through the agency of thought, the anthropomorphic or personal for the divine or most general, their identity with the aspects of motion becomes evident; for the Infinite and the Absolute mean simply space and time, the objective and subjective aspects of Motion.

The principle of universal gravitation or the absolute interdependence of all things can be applied to mind and speech. All words centre about a single word, all activities, inorganic, organic, and superorganic, are strictly serial and interconnected; they are indivisible excepting in so far as they yield to classification. In a word, the activities of the mind, and of nature, are forms of motion and can be expressed in terms of its aspects, space, and time. Applying this rule to language we find it impossible to frame a sentence without employing a verb, the symbol of action, and all the parts of the sentence are but modifications of this action expressed in terms of place and time.

This generalization, apparently so simple, is of transcendent importance. It is fatal to every superstition and every form of mystery. It defines the limits of language and the nature of perception, for it shows that thought is in reality but action.

To establish so important a conclusion as this, analysis alone will not suffice. The analysis must be accompanied with a synthesis which shall join the culture of the past with that of the present and show that the unification of knowledge is the natural consequence of the intellectual and moral development of the race.

This means that we need a new religion-a religion which shall appeal to the reason as well as to the emotions; which shall establish not a divine mystery, but the divine unity of life and mind.

In Greece, thought was first emancipated from feeling; and true to the myth of the goddess Athenæ, reason sprang into the world a complete being armed cap-a-pie, ready for action. Before this, thought had been involved with feeling in religious sentiment; it had asserted its supremacy in many individuals and in many ways, but it had never obtained its freedom and established itself as an independent power in the world. This logical sovereignty, which was so firmly established in ancient Greece, has lasted through many vicissitudes to the present day. In the meantime society has developed to such an extent, that its other great forces clamor for an equal recognition. Feeling becomes louder and louder in her protestations of equality with the intellect. Her plea is that morality is not the function of the mind any more than of the organism, of reason any more than of slowly acquired habit; that the will is not a purely logical phenomenon, but that its energies spring from and disappear in the labyrinths of sentiency; that in a word, there is a logic of feeling as well as a logic of signs, and the intellect is the companion of the heart, not its despotic ruler. Thus the despotism of reason is disputed, and we have the extraordinary spectacle of philosophy-ay, even metaphysicsdisproving the unreasonable pretensions of an alleged "pure reason" and winning success by the subjugation of these pretensions.

The Pythagoreans were the first who attempted a complete classification of the facts of the universe. Their effort, though feeble, was in the right direction; for the first principle of perception is analysis, or classification; and knowledge can never be unified until an ultimate or complete analysis has been performed. Aristotle repeated this effort, and inscribed his celebrated ten categories of thought.

The history of thought has moved on, through the inter

ruptions of the decline of the Greek and Roman states, and the lethargy of the Dark and the Middle Ages. The light of Islam threw a pale glare upon the thought of Greece, but it soon faded out. Then the scholastic age ushered in the revival of learning, and the arena of intellectual war was reopened in Europe. Many and fierce have been its conflicts. Descartes and Spinoza followed upon the wrangling of the Schoolmen, and established great systems of original investigation. Bacon anticipated this effort, and opened the career of logic in England. Then Kant reared his unequalled monument of Idealism in Germany, his example being followed by an army of the most thorough and devoted students the world has produced. It was in Germany that the exclusive sovereignty of the mind reached its zenith, when Kant declared that all reality was subjective, that Mind was the cause of the universe. Against this audacious tenet Science entered a protest, which soon assumed the proportions of a great impeachment; and the psychologists of England superseded the idealists of Germany in the world of thought. The study of mind as the function of an organism was the form which this protest first took. It needed but a Darwin to show the perspectives of organic life, and a Spencer to point out that the individual was but a single link in the continuous chain of life and mind, for this great movement, supported by the best scholars on the Continent, to produce a silent revolution in knowledge.

The world, then, has fully entered upon a new era of thought. But whether this thought is to be the sole enjoyment of a few, or is to become the common property of a great civilization, is a question which time must decide. If it is to become general, the reform of knowledge must penetrate to the very foundations of society; which means that the religious and the intellectual faith. of the multitude must be pledged to a single power or government. To accomplish this, a new civilization must arise, and whether it can arise out of any thing short of the ruins of the old, is the question which presses upon our age..