nd is
Noumenon the unseen and unknown, as contrasted with Phenomena the seen
and known; the universe, the creation of the mind; the mind, the
product of the universe. All these ideas and many others so widely
differing can none of them receive a demonstrable proof;--these
contrary statements show how far we are from possessing any real
knowledge of what mind is. After all that has been written, elaborated
and imagined, do we actually _know_ more than Omar Khayam knew?

"There was the door to which I found no key;
There was the veil through which I could not see;
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was--and then no more of Thee and Me."

Philosophy is still powerless to tell us what mind is; the self, the
ego always vanishes as we seem to be nearing it, it always eludes our
deepest probings--we only demonstrate our failure in regard to our
knowledge of it. All this is true, but should we therefore despair? If
we are born with the record on the brain of the inexorable desire to
_know_, the very failure should stimulate us to further, and greater,
and more fruitful questionings.

II.

CONTRASTS.

CARLYLE, GEORGE ELIOT, MAZZINI, BROWNING,

All contrasts drawn between writers, and thinkers should have for aim
the setting forth of some striking and fundamental difference in
thought, and it would be hard to find anywhere a greater and a more
vivid contrast than that between Carlyle and George Eliot. For George
Eliot's philosophy was centred in the well-being of the Race.

Carlyle's was summed up in the worth of the Individual.

George Eliot teaches in prose and still more in poetry that
Personality, with its hopes, loves, faiths, aspirations, must all be
relinquished, and its agonies and pains endured, should Humanity gain
by the sacrifice and the endurance.

She considers the Individual as part of collective humanity, and that
he does not live for himself, he has no continuance of personal life,
he has no permanence, except as a living influence on the Race. This
is the Positivist creed, the Racial Creed.

Beyond the influence that it exerts, spiritual personality is doomed.
It is not humanity in God but humanity in itself which is to exist
from age to age, solely in the memory of succeeding generations.

"Oh may I join the Choir Invisible
Of those immortal dead, who live again
In minds made better by their presence."

Permanence and continuance and immortality are in the ra