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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVOLUTION
notions and fantasies which had been raised on the proud pedestal of eternal truth by authority and superstition. Time-honoured articles of faith, teicological explanation of the problems of nature and society, the misty wisdom of metaphysicsall these landmarks of the spiritualist view of life could not stand the test of inductive enquiry. It became evident that, should the old mode of thought remain in force, should established doctrines, dogmas and authority continue to govern the life of man, individually and socially, his own experience must be disbelieved, knowledge must be fearfully shunned as the serpent in the garden of Eden, superstition must be cherished as spirituality, ignorance adored as virtue, vain fantasy accorded the distinction of revealed wisdom, and we should still appeal to Popes and priests for the answer to the problems of the physical and social sciences. But the imperious advance of knowledge enabled man to withdraw more and more phenomena from the inscrutable will of supernatural agencies, and trace their causes to immanent properties and mechanical laws of nature.
Still, whenever and wherever science failed to give fully satisfactory explanation of all the phenomena, man continued to place reliance upon supernatural agencies supposing them to be beyond the reach of science and maintaining in consequence that the defective and imperfect scientific
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