Man has been studied proudly, contemptuously, rather, from the point of view supposed to be authoritatively settled.  The self-sufficiency of egotistic natures was never more fully shown than in the expositions of the worthlessness and wretchedness of their fellow-creatures given by the dogmatists who have “gone back,” as the vulgar phrase is, on their race, their own flesh and blood.  Did you ever read what Mr. Bancroft says about Calvin in his article on Jonathan Edwards?—­and mighty well said it is too, in my judgment.  Let me remind you of it, whether you have read it or not.  “Setting himself up over against the privileged classes, he, with a loftier pride than theirs, revealed the power of a yet higher order of nobility, not of a registered ancestry of fifteen generations, but one absolutely spotless in its escutcheon, preordained in the council chamber of eternity.”  I think you’ll find I have got that sentence right, word for word, and there ’s a great deal more in it than many good folks who call themselves after the reformer seem to be aware of.  The Pope put his foot on the neck of kings, but Calvin and his cohort crushed the whole human race under their heels in the name of the Lord of Hosts.  Now, you see, the point that people don’t understand is the absolute and utter humility of science, in opposition to this doctrinal self-sufficiency.  I don’t doubt this may sound a little paradoxical at first, but I think you will find it is all right.  You remember the courtier and the monarch,—­Louis the Fourteenth, wasn’t it?—­never mind, give the poor fellows that live by setting you right a chance.  “What o’clock is it?” says the king.  “Just whatever o’clock your Majesty pleases,” says the courtier.  I venture to say the monarch was a great deal more humble than the follower, who pretended that his master was superior to such trifling facts as the revolution of the planet.  It was the same thing, you remember, with King Canute and the tide on the sea-shore.  The king accepted the scientific fact of the tide’s rising.  The loyal hangers-on, who believed in divine right, were too proud of the company they found themselves in to make any such humiliating admission.  But there are people, and plenty of them, to-day, who will dispute facts just as clear to those who have taken the pains to learn what is known about them, as that of the tide’s rising.  They don’t like to admit these facts, because they throw doubt upon some of their cherished opinions.  We are getting on towards the last part of this nineteenth century.  What we have gained is not so much in positive knowledge, though that is a good deal, as it is in the freedom of discussion of every subject that comes within the range of observation and inference.  How long is it since Mrs. Piozzi wrote,—­“Let me hope that you will not pursue geology till it leads you into doubts destructive of all comfort in this world and all happiness in the next”?

The Master paused and I remained silent, for I was thinking things I could not say.