curved, nothing is certain; the 12th Axiom is a mistake, and parallel lines may meet.*

* A writer in the Electrical Review remarks: "We have no more means of determining if there is an error in the estimate of the magnitude of the three angles than a man would have of determining the curvature of the earth from a square inch of surface of a pond. Suppose three angles of a triangle are less than two right angles by the billionth of a second, how does this affect the properties of space? We should then have every pair of parallel lines meeting within a finite distance, and it would be possible to travel in a straight line continuously, and to return to the starting-point in a finite time, having travelled over a finite path. Space, then, need neither be infinite nor need it have boundaries any more than a spherical surface is infinite or has boundaries. . . . The whole of the ether of space would be a closed globule, perhaps spherical in shape, and matter would be a galaxy of nucleoli inside that globule." To which the unregenerate may reply: (1) that if any so-called parallel lines did meet, that fact would prove them to be not parallel, for parallel lines which meet involve as clear a contradiction in terms as a circle with unequal radii; and (2) the statement may be questioned that a sphere has no boundaries. Surely it is bounded by its surface, and if space is a globe with a galaxy of nucleoli inside it, it must have a surface, and what is there outside that? The argument is that if space be spherical, and a man were to follow his nose indefinitely, he would eventually arrive at the very point from which he started. In other words, the universe, or space, would be proved finite, and yet, though finite, it would still baffle us, for we should

For those, therefore, who desire universal scepticism, universal negation, every possible facility is at hand. There is nothing which may not be denied, and that on the highest scientific and philosophical authority. Not only is the external world an illusion; one's very identity may be demolished, and consciousness itself relegated to the same realm of dreams and shadows into which everything else has been dissolved.

'Thou canst not prove that I who speak with thee
Am not thyself in converse with thyself;

For nothing worthy proving can be proved'

Ah, but that cuts both ways, does it not? And there are some, we must not forget, who still

never discover its limits, but flying this way or that, through extent apparently boundless, be constantly arriving at places we had visited before, prisoners without walls, free to move any distance in any direction, yet eternally confined to a mysterious area in which the further we moved from any given point the nearer should we approach it along the very path we traverse. It seems that one rather important consideration is here overlooked. If we are indeed living in the interior of this capsule, what is there-hypothetically, of course-to prevent us from emerging on the surface of it, just as a needle poked through an orange would emerge upon the rind?

have a yearning after something solid, something more satisfactory even than nihilism, however logical; and to them the poet says:

Nor yet disproven; wherefore be thou wise;
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to faith beyond the forms of faith!

*

*

For knowledge is the swallow on the lake,
That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there,
But never yet hath dipt into the Abysm,
The Abysm of all Abysms, beneath; within
The blue of sky and sea, the green of earth,
And in the million-millionth of a grain,
Which, cleft and cleft again for evermore,
And, ever vanishing, never vanishes-
To me, my son, more mystic than myself,
Or even than the Nameless is to me.'

SALVATION BY METAPHYSICS.

MAN," said Goethe," is not born to solve the mystery of existence; but he must, nevertheless, attempt it, in order that he may learn how to keep within the limits of the Knowable." The mystery of existence of Being in the abstract— is as much a mystery to-day as it was in the times of Xenophanes the Rhapsodist, and Parmenides the Logician; perhaps it is insoluble by reason of the very conditions of human thought. But though we may never reach the solution, we may be constantly getting nearer to it just as a recurring decimal will lead us nearer to the desired quotient to all eternity, but never suffer us to arrive; and the first stage .in our journey will be marked when we are able to give some definite account of the essential

constitution of Matter. Hitherto no one has succeeded in the quest. To the inquiry, 'What is Matter?' we have many answers; but none of them is final and satisfactory. One school of metaphysicians deny that we have any proofs of its objective existence at all, since all our senses tell us is that we are conscious of certain changes in sensation; and sensation is purely subjective. We may see a man, and touch a man; but that proves nothing as regards the existence of anything outside ourselves. A certain change in our subjective consciousness that we call sight and touch is all that we can be sure of, all that we have any right to recognise. Again, we are told that Matter is phenomenal merely; that is, that it is nothing more than the phenomenon, projection, or appearance of some underlying and invisible noumenon, or reality—the manifestation of a hidden and intrinsic substance, using that word in its metaphysical sense of substratum. John Stuart Mill defined it as the permanent possibility of sensation'; while the contributor of an article to the Penny Cyclopedia' calls it 'everything in the