AUTUMN XI
XI
Yet that, perhaps, will be the mind of coming man; if not the final attainment of his intellectual progress, at all events a long period of self-satisfaction, assumed as finality. We talk of the "ever aspiring soul"; we take for granted that if one religion passes away, another must arise. But what if man presently find himself without spiritual needs? Such modification of his being cannot be deemed impossible; many signs of our life to-day seem to point towards it. If the habits of thought favoured by physical science do but sink deep enough, and no vast calamity come to check mankind in its advance to material contentment, the age of true positivism may arise. Then it will be the common privilege, "rerum cognoscere causas"; the word supernatural will have no sense; superstition will be a dimly understood trait of the early race; and where now we perceive an appalling Mystery, everything will be lucid and serene as a geometric demonstration. Such an epoch of Reason might be the happiest the world could know. Indeed, it would either be that, or it would never come about at all. For suffering and sorrow are the great Doctors of Metaphysic; and, remembering this, one cannot count very surely upon the rationalist millennium.