selves, that
makes for righteousness." But Emerson believed in a power that was in
himself that made for righteousness.

Metaphysics reaches its highest stage when it affirms "All is One," or
"All is Mind," just as Theology reaches its highest conception when it
becomes Monotheistic--having one God and curtailing the personality of
the devil to a mere abstraction.

But this does not long satisfy, for we begin to ask, "What is this One?"
or "What is Mind?"

Then Positivity comes in and says that the highest wisdom lies in
knowing that we do not know anything, and never can, concerning a First
Cause. All we find is phenomena and behind phenomena, phenomena. The
laws of Nature do not account for the origin of the laws of Nature.
Spencer's famous chapter on the Unknowable was derived largely from
Comte, who attempted to define the limits of human knowledge. And it is
worth noting that the one thing which gave most offense in both Comte's
and Spencer's works was their doctrine of the Unknowable. This, indeed,
forms but a small part of the work of these men, and if it were all
demolished there would still remain their doctrine of the known. The
bitterness of Theology toward Science arises from the fact that as we
find things out we dispense with the arbitrary god, and his business
agent, the priest, who insists that no transaction is legal unless he
ratifies it.

Men begin by explaining everything, and the explanations given are
always first for other people. Parents answer the child, not telling him
the actual truth, but giving him that which will satisfy--that which he
can mentally digest. To say, "The fairies brought it," may be all right
until the child begins to ask who the fairies are, and wants to be shown
one, and then we have to make the somewhat humiliating confession that
there are no fairies.

But now we perceive that this mild fabrication in reference to Santa
Claus, and the fairies, is right and proper mental food for the child.
His mind can not grasp the truth that some things are unknowable; and he
is not sufficiently skilled in the things of the world to become
interested in them--he must have a resting-place for his thought, so the
fairy-tale comes in as an aid to the growing imagination. Only this: we
place no penalty on disbelief in fairies, nor do we make special offers
of reward to all who believe that fairies actually exist. Neither do we
tell the child that people who believe in fairies are good,