lutely to work and strives by honest industry to build up a fortune for himself. And this is the true lesson for human society. There is no room for social Micawbers. Whatever "turns up" must be turned up. The passive attitude is suicidal. This folding of the arms and resignation to fate is certain to meet its fate. The cosmic Juggernaut will roll over and crush those who throw themselves before it. The logic of science is action, and only by busy brains and busy hands can the recognized evils of the world be lessened or removed.
The second principle in this great lesson is that it is only because all nature is a domain of rigid law, of absolute impartiality, and devoid of all moral quality and all intelligence, that man can hope to carve out of it his fortune or shape his destiny. If it had sympathies and preferences and prejudices; if it had intelligence and will, it would be utterly unmanageable and would ever remain the master and despot of man, as it practically has been during most of his early history, and it could never become his servant and all-powerful aid and ally as it is fast getting to be and is certain ere long fully to become. Thus the hardest facts of existence are seen to embody the germs of the brightest hopes. Those dark realities which have been taken as arguments for pessimism, are themselves, when correctly understood, the foundations of the only sound philosophy of social progress.
The only proper attitude on all these questions is to view the universe objectively. Dismissing forever all idea of what it ought be, we must simply seek to determine what it is. We must also divest ourselves wholly of the notion that we can determine this by pure reflection. There is no fixed way in which things must be which enables us to reason out the way they are. While, of course, the way they are is really the only way they could have been, still the antecedent causes which have brought them into existence, besides being unknown to man, are so infinitely complex that they are for the most part wholly beyond his grasp. For example, anyone can conceive of a solar system in which no single relation is the same as exists in ours. Anyone can conceive of beings inhabiting a planet all of which shall
