y, according to the philosophers, will be,
when discovered, an infallible method of establishing the truth of an
opinion, a judgment, a theory, or a system, in nearly the same way as
gold is recognized by the touchstone, as iron approaches the magnet,
or, better still, as we verify a mathematical operation by applying
the PROOF. TIME has hitherto served as a sort of criterion for society.
Thus, the primitive men--having observed that they were not all equal
in strength, beauty, and labor--judged, and rightly, that certain ones
among them were called by nature to the performance of simple and common
functions; but they concluded, and this is where their error lay, that
these same individuals of duller intellect, more restricted genius, and
weaker personality, were predestined to SERVE the others; that is, to
labor while the latter rested, and to have no other will than theirs:
and from this idea of a natural subordination among men sprang
domesticity, which, voluntarily accepted at first, was imperceptibly
converted into horrible slavery. Time, making this error more palpable,
has brought about justice. Nations have learned at their own cost that
the subjection of man to man is a false idea, an erroneous theory,
pernicious alike to master and to slave. And yet such a social system
has stood several thousand years, and has been defended by celebrated
philosophers; even to-day, under somewhat mitigated forms, sophists of
every description uphold and extol it. But experience is bringing it to
an end.

Time, then, is the criterion of societies; thus looked at, history is
the demonstration of the errors of humanity by the argument _reductio ad
absurdum_.

Now, the criterion sought for by metaphysicians would have the advantage
of discriminating at once between the true and the false in every
opinion; so that in politics, religion, and morals, for example, the
true and the useful being immediately recognized, we should no longer
need to await the sorrowful experience of time. Evidently such a secret
would be death to the sophists,--that cursed brood, who, under different
names, excite the curiosity of nations, and, owing to the difficulty
of separating the truth from the error in their artistically woven
theories, lead them into fatal ventures, disturb their peace, and fill
them with such extraordinary prejudice.

Up to this day, the criterion of certainty remains a mystery; this is
owing to the multitude of criteria that h