ion, I believed that the coming
together of the churches would prove to be a blessing to the world, but
I am now persuaded that it would be a curse, because the league of
churches would co-operate with the league of nations in its robbing and
enslaving schemes, the churches doing the lying and the nations the
coercing.

We are living in the age of scientism and, in the case of its true sons
and daughters, only scientifically demonstrated facts count in any
argumentation.

From the scientific point of view it is seen that there is but one
universal Kingdom of Life, Nature. This kingdom may be divided into
three, perhaps four, states constituting the United States of Life: the
mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human.

Beginning with the highest, each of these states, except the lowest, is
dependent upon the next lower. The only independent autonomous state in
the kingdom is the mineral. This is the greatest both as to its extent
and importance. It is the common source of every supply of all the
states of life, and the seat of each of their governments.

All theologians and some metaphysicians postulate a fifth state of
life, the divine, placing it above the rest as their source.

Comte, who preceded Marx as a social philosopher, and who is the founder
of modern socialism of the reformatory type, as Marx is of the
revolutionary one, had this to say about the theologians, metaphysicians
and scientists, and he was right:

From the study of the development of human intelligence, in all
directions, and through all times, the discovery arises of a great
fundamental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and which has
a solid foundation of proof, both in the facts of our organization
and in our historical experience. This law is this: that each of
our leading conceptions--each branch of our knowledge--passes
successively through three different theoretical conditions: the
theological, or fictitious; the metaphysical, or abstract; and the
scientific, or positive. In other words, the human mind, by its
nature, employs in its progress three methods of philosophizing,
the character of which is essentially different and radically
opposed: viz., the theological method, the metaphysical and the
positive. Hence arise three philosophies, or general systems of
conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, each of which excludes
the others. The first