But now that the course of our reflections has brought an incidental moment of selfassertion, let us throw off the burden of humility which we have been hitherto wearing. Logic is indeed a mere minister, but it is a minister for all, and as such its function has some kinship with whatever is Divine. It prepares man for the emergencies which must come to him as man, not as mere physician, or lawyer, or clergyman, or other. While stars, stones, trees, do not think, and brutes, if they think, do not become conscious of their thought, man thinks, and may become conscious of his thought, and in becoming conscious he sharpens the edge of his insight and refines the refined gold of his superiority. Conscious Thought is doubly rational; it is the Coronation of what is Sovereign in the whole Creation. We have done too much honour to Sciences in comparing them to kings in contrast with Logic as herald or even as minister. Conscious Reason is King, and Sciences are like mere Barons. And while the Sciences are marking out each his own petty Barony, and spelling out his own local title, Logic is passing the sceptre to the kingly

hand and fitting the crown on the brow; or, like some High Priest of the Hebrews, is anointing with oil the chosen of the Lord.

LECTURE III

THE INDEPENDENT VALUE OF PSYCHOLOGY

T is under the kindly sunlight of Civilisation

IT

that the man who is so fortunate as to live to-day carries on through the allotted span of life his contest with Destruction. He may often remind himself how happy that sunlight is compared with the gloom of primitive barbarism. The terrors of primeval time are softened or dispersed by the accumulations of power and knowledge that come hourly to his aid. There are ready to hand, for instance, a thousand instruments that carry, embodied in form and material, the wisdom of generations. He may possess instruments of perception beyond his own sensitivities-clocks to measure time, scales for weight, thermometers and barometers for heat and storm, inscriptions to verify coinage, labels for food or poison, even pencils that will write out the action of the

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inner organs of his body; he may possess instruments for manipulation beyond his own muscular powers-machinery for manufacture, houses for shelter, carriages for movement; he may possess even automatisms that can unite the functions of sensitivity and manipulation, that can perceive without his supervision, and react without the intervention of his own decision. A safety-valve to a boiler both detects and relieves the excess of pressure, and an electric motor may be so constructed that, when the speed of its revolving wheels overpasses what is needed, the increase is felt by inanimate agents waiting to break and diminish the propelling forces.

Again, there lie within the ready reach of his understanding Counsels of Science fitted for his practical needs, though he may not stay to learn their reasons. The laboured thought of many minds has left its fruitage long after the minds themselves have re-merged in the general whole of things. Even in the beginnings of literature, reflective man was enumerating his resources with wonder: "the vein for the silver and a place for gold where they fine it; the setting of an end to darkness; the path

which no fowl knoweth; the binding of the floods from overflowing": and was contrasting his "knowledge of natural things" with his ignorance as to matters that could not be so easily taught to man by man.

And again, the living minds around us carry each some stores of knowledge which they may use for the good of all. The trained professions can at any time produce what is wanted from among deep stores of means scientifically pledged to ends. All Physiology and Therapeutics are waiting under the crimson lamp for our sign of summons. Even in the days when our fathers tilled the common acres, one man brought the plough, another the harness, and others the oxen. And Science has now so specialised our lives that we thread all the ways of hourly work through a sweet interplay of co-operation.

Thus Science and Society surround us with the security of a knowledge and energy that are not our own. We view the massed forces of Destruction as though from a hill of Dothan, girdled invisibly by "the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof."

Life, we have admitted, is not wholly a con